Alphabet Hicks

Three

Hicks sat on a bench in Bryant Park again, watching a pigeon strut. It was an utterly disgusting and sordid mess, and he was in for it. Not its least disgusting aspect was that he had only twenty dollars left of Mrs. Dundee’s two hundred. He could take the subway downtown and borrow a hundred and eighty from old man Harley and pay Mrs. Dundee back. He sat and watched the pigeon and considered that, and finally decided to eat lunch first.

But it was significant that instead of making for Third Avenue, where a plate of stew, with bread and butter, was twenty cents, he went to Joyce’s on 41st Street, got comfortable in one of the leather-upholstered booths, and ordered a double portion of baked oysters.

And it was there that he found a short cut to a trail which otherwise he would have reached only after long and laborious twists and turnings. He was spearing the last oyster when something so abruptly caught his attention, by way of his ear, that the oyster on his fork was halted in mid-air. He had been so preoccupied with his own concerns that he had been oblivious to the murmur and clatter of the restaurant, and probably would have remained so had not a sudden lull in the general noise cleared the way for an instant, so that he heard the voice quite plainly. It came from directly behind him.

It said, “...going now, and you can’t stop me!”

It was the voice of Judith Dundee.

The oyster still brandished on his fork, Hicks twisted his head. The voice went on. Enough reached his ear to confirm his recognition of it, and to tell him that it came from the booth adjoining his, over the back of the upholstered seat, but in the renewed surrounding noise no more words were audible. He could hear, or thought he could, a low urgent masculine voice replying to her, and was straining his ear to recognize it, when he became aware of swift and impetuous movement. Were they leaving? He slid to the edge of his seat and peered around, and got a view of a female figure, the back of it, in a gray woolen suit and a fur neckpiece, darting down the aisle. Alone. On sudden impulse he acted. Tossing a dollar bill on the table and grabbing his hat, he followed. As he passed the adjoining booth a glance showed him that it was occupied by a man about his own age, with a sharp pointed nose incongruous in a face white and puckered with distress.

By the time Hicks got to the sidewalk Mrs. Dundee was thirty paces away, headed east. He kept his distance. There were people — Inspector Vetch of the Homicide Squad, for instance, who would have richly appreciated the situation. Absolutely typical Hicks, Vetch would have said, tailing the woman who had hired him.

But he would have been wrong, as Hicks soon discovered for himself, when the gray woolen suit turned left on Madison Avenue and he caught a glimpse of its wearer’s profile. It was not Mrs. Dundee!

He stopped short. Then he went on again, impelled by logic. That voice had come from the booth behind his or he would cut off his ears. And that woman had come from that booth and there had been no other woman in it. At least he would hear her speak again. He closed up. She turned right on 42nd Street and entered Grand Central Station, and when she headed across the concourse for a ticket window he was only ten paces behind. There was a man ahead of her at the window, and as she stopped she turned for a look at the clock.

It certainly was not Mrs. Dundee. She was something more than half Mrs. Dundee’s age, but not much. She was fair, extremely fair; and when her glance, leaving the clock, rested on Hicks’s face for an instant, his eyes dropped, away from the pain and distress in hers. It came her turn at the window and she spoke through the grill:

“Round trip to Katonah, please. There’s a train at one-eighteen, isn’t there? Track twenty-two? Thank you.”

It was the voice he had heard in the restaurant. Hicks stared incredulously at the back of her head. The resemblance to Judith Dundee’s voice was startling, little short of amazing. Even so, that might be dismissed as none of his business, as merely one of nature’s rare slips in her monumental task of differentiating two billion two-legged creatures one from the other; but what about Katonah? She was going to Katonah!

That was too much. When she had moved away he bought a ticket to Katonah, hurried to the track entrance, and reached the platform in time to see her enter a coach. Inside he took a seat behind her, three seats removed from hers, and presently the train started. She had removed her hat and neckpiece, and he could see the back of her head. It was a well-shaped head, and her hair was fair and soft-looking...

Beyond White Plains the train was a local, and the ride consisted mostly of jolts, stops, starts, and more jolts, but at least it kept to schedule, and Hicks’s watch told him it was 2:39 when the trainman opened the door and called Katonah. He followed the quarry down the aisle to the vestibule, descended at her heels, and paused to light a cigarette as she looked uncertainly around. Three cars were backed up to the platform extension, with men standing by them calling “Taxi!” and she headed for one. Hicks was there close enough to hear when she spoke to the driver:

“Dundee’s? On Long Hill Road? Do you know where it is?”

The driver said he did, and opened the door for her, and they were off.

Hicks felt his blood moving. That was totally unreasonable; the mere fact that a woman whose voice resembled Judith Dundee’s was bound for Dundee’s laboratory brought home no bacon; but it was not reason that pumps blood. He addressed another driver standing there:

“If I’d been quicker on the trigger that lady might have been willing to save me a quarter. I’m going where she is.”

“You’d have saved more than a quarter, brother. It’s three miles. One buck. Hop in.”

Hicks got onto the front seat with him. As they rolled away from the station the driver asked, “Which do you want, the house or the laboratory?”

“Why, is there a house?”

“Sure there’s a house.” The driver explained, as one who likes to explain, encouraged by questions. The people who worked in the laboratory — Mr. Brager, young Dundee, and Miss Gladd — lived in the house. Likewise Mrs. Powell, who looked after the house. The outside man didn’t live there.

“Was that Miss Gladd who got off the train?”

“Her? No.”

“Who was it?”

“Don’t know.” He slowed the car, which had been speeding along the highway, swung it sharply to the right onto a narrow graveled road, and accelerated. “Never saw her before that I remember.”

A little farther on the car had to swerve onto the grass to meet and pass the other taxi, returning, and in another minute it slowed to a crawl as it approached an entrance to a drive on the right.

“Here’s the house,” the driver announced. “The drive goes on around some woods to the laboratory—”

“This will do.” Hicks climbed out, got rid of a dollar, and stood there while the car backed, got turned, and sped off in dust. Then he walked up the curving drive toward the house.

The age of the trees and shrubbery showed that the place was an old one, but the house had been modernized. Instead of a covered porch in front there was a flagged terrace open to the sky, the walls were stucco with a plain trim of a greenish material which Hicks suspected of being a Dundee plastic, and the windows had metal casements. No one was in sight. Hicks pushed the button beside the door, and when it opened and a florid-faced woman appeared, he asked for Mr. Brager.

“He’s over at the laboratory.”

“How do I get there, by the drive?”

“You’ve got a car?”

“Taxi. I sent it back.”

“Then it’s shorter this way.”

She bustled out to show him, off to the left, where at the edge of the lawn a path entered a strip of woods and undergrowth, and he thanked her and made for it. In the woods was a cool damp smell, and he had gone not more than forty paces when he came to a little bridge over a brook. That stopped him. There were not many things in life that he ever felt the need of, but among the few people who knew him well it was notorious that he needed a brook. He had, off and on, here and there, looked at dozens of brooks. Now he halted on the bridge and looked at this one, and listened to it. His thoughts, however, for the minutes he stood there, were more ironic than idyllic. The aimlessness of the brook was only apparent; his own aimlessness in following that voice...

“Looking for somebody?”

The footsteps on the soft dirt path, not yet carpeted with autumn leaves, had not been audible. Hicks whirled, startled, and was looking at a young man clad in soiled white coveralls, hatless, with sober bluish-gray eyes set deep in a bony but well-arranged face.

Hicks nodded and moved on off the bridge. “I’m looking for Mr. Brager.”

“He’s at the laboratory. I doubt if he can see you — we’ve got the furnace going.” The youth stepped onto the bridge and turned back. “I’m Ross Dundee, his assistant. Will I do?”

“I don’t believe so. It’s just a little personal matter.”

“Righto.” He was off the way Hicks had come.

Hicks went on. In another hundred yards or so the path emerged from the woods, and there, across a small meadow, was a low unadorned concrete building flanked by two venerable oaks. He approached. A graveled drive extended the length of the front and curved around either corner, evidently encircling it. From open windows came a low steady hum as of a gigantic motor. Toward the left was a door, and since no push button was there, Hicks turned the knob and entered.

No space was wasted on a hall. This, evidently, was the office, a medium-sized room which at first sight made you blink on account of the riot of colored plastics. There was a purple desk, a row of blue filing cabinets, a mottled gray and yellow table covered with an assortment of gadgets, and chairs of all colors; and at another desk, that one pink, with a green typewriter and a red microphone perched on it, a girl sat crying.

The scene was altogether so chaotic as to be grotesque, with the subdued hum of machinery from beyond walls providing a background like the rumbling of a dragon from the depths of a cavern — but it had competition from another dragon. Though no man was visible, a man’s voice filled the room, uttering strident and mysterious incantations:

“Six eighty-four! Twelve minutes at five one oh, nine minutes at six three five! Vat two at three-ten, less tendency to streak and more uniform hardening! Shrinkage point oh three millimeters...”

And the girl sat with her fingers dancing on the keys of her typewriter, typing away like mad, while tears ran down her cheeks and made dewdrops on both sides of her chin. Hicks gazed at her in consternation. Suddenly the man’s voice stopped, and immediately the girl, peering through the tears at the sheet in her machine, read off what she had typed into the red microphone. She spoke clearly and distinctly, stopping twice to catch her breath with spasmodic gasps.

Then the subdued humming dragon had the field.

“Mother of waters!” said Hicks in a tone of astonishment. “Do you have to splash on it to make it work?”

The girl did not reply. She was using her handkerchief, removing dewdrops and streaks. Hicks noted with approval that her nails were not painted and her lips were her own — or at least not obtrusively chromatic. Her eyes, when they finally came to him, were clear and candid and direct.

“I wasn’t splashing,” she said with spirit. “What do you want?”

“That’s rude,” Hicks said firmly. “You shouldn’t be rude.”

“Neither should you. You bust in here when I’m crying and make that crack about splashing.”

“Okay. I’d like to see Mr. Brager.”

“I’m afraid you can’t.” Her lungs’ urgent demand for oxygen spoiled her dignity. The air rushed in with little hissing gasps, shaking her shoulders and breasts. She gulped and recovered. “He’s very busy.”

Hicks nodded. “I met Mr. Dundee on the path, and he said they’ve got the furnace going. Will it go all day?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes it does—”

“What was the pressure on Lot Six from eleven to twelve?”

It was the voice again. This time Hicks localized it as coming from a grill set in the wall at the girl’s right. She spoke into the microphone:

“I haven’t that, Mr. Brager. Mr. Dundee wasn’t using the speaker, he recorded it, and it isn’t typed yet.”

“Run over the plates and get it.”

Hicks sat down in a yellow chair and took a newspaper from his pocket, but watched the ensuing performance instead of reading. The girl reached to a contraption at the end of her desk and pulled it closer, and from a rack attached to it selected one of a row of disks like phonograph records, except that they were the color of weak tea. She put it in place on the player and flipped a switch, and in a moment a voice sounded, the voice of Ross Dundee:

“Thirty grams of Formula K give no result. Fifty grams increase the viscosity...”

When the third plate she tried gave her the desired information, she relayed it to Brager through the mircrophone, pushed the machine out of the way, and sat in readiness for another sortie by the dragon.

She sighed deeply.

Hicks asked, “Are you Miss Gladd?”

“Yes.” She sighed again. “That’s me. Why?”

“I just wondered. I happened to know there was a Miss Gladd here, and when a young woman got off the train I was on and I heard her tell the driver to bring her here, I jumped to the conclusion she was Miss Gladd. She was about your build, but a few years older. And by the way—” Hicks glanced around as though the thought had just occurred to him — “where is she? Didn’t she get here?”

“Not — not here. She’s over at the house.”

“Oh, then you know her?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Then I was right about her name anyhow. She is Miss Gladd.”

“Not any more. She married — her name is Mrs. Cooper.”

“Cooper? I knew a—”

The voice filled the room again, and the girl began on the typewriter. Hicks unfolded his newspaper, but still did not read. He was not in a mood to read. His blood had tricked him. It had begun to pump, he had felt it, when that woman had told the driver to take her to Dundee’s; and now she was only coming to see her sister! He had never been fooled like that before, by his blood or nerves or whatever it was, and he didn’t like it.

Nor, obviously, did he accept it as final, for he continued to sit there. Parallelograms of the afternoon sun through the windows crept slowly across the floor. During the intervals between the dragon’s incantations he made efforts at conversation with Miss Gladd, but she was preoccupied and laconic. When his watch said ten minutes past four he decided, from pure obstinacy, that he wouldn’t go without a talk with Brager.

But there was an intervention. Hearing a sound outside, Hicks stretched his neck to look through a window, and saw a car pull up on the drive and stop directly in front of the door. The man driving it popped out, and Hicks knew the man. It was R. I. Dundee. Just as the doorknob turned Hicks hunched over with his elbows on his knees, his head down, myopically intent on his newspaper. That way he could see nothing but Dundee’s feet passing in front of him, and his face could not be seen at all. Dundee’s voice sounded:

“Good afternoon, Miss Flagg — that’s not your name. What’s your name?”

“Gladd, Mr. Dundee. Heather Gladd.”

“No wonder I couldn’t remember it. Where’s Mr. Brager, inside? I hear the furnace, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir. Shall I tell him—”

“No, I’ll go in.”

Dundee’s feet were moving, receding, and Hicks was congratulating himself on having escaped an embarrassing encounter when suddenly the hum ceased and an instant later came the sound of a door opening, and Dundee spoke:

“Hello, Herman.”

“Hello, Dick.” It was the strident voice that had been coming intermittently from the grill for the past hour. “I saw you passing the windows. Ross told me you were coming out. He went over to the house—”

“I saw him. I want a talk with you.”

“Of course. But the furnace — excuse me. Who is that man, Miss Gladd, if you please?”

“He’s waiting to see you, Mr. Brager.”

That ruined it. Hicks arose and faced them. The incredulous and irate stare of R. I. Dundee gave Hicks an opportunity to observe that Brager was a flustery little man with a flat head and protruding eyeballs, somewhat ludicrous in a faded and spotted brown apron that reached below his knees.

“What the devil,” Dundee blurted, “are you doing here?”

Hicks, in a tone of most emphatic and unalloyed disgust, said one word.

“Nothing.”

And made for the door.