White Sheep by Theodore Mathieson


I came, at long last, to my ancestral home. I found there horror, vice, incredible evil. And one feeble old lady, who had guessed, my secret...


The cost of my bus ticket from Portland to San Francisco left exactly fifty cents in my pocket, and this I spent on two bags of peanuts and a bar of chocolate, which I washed down with the free ice water in the coach.

When I got off the bus at the S.F. terminal, I walked through the shed, just as if I had a destination, too, like everybody else. But then I sat down in the waiting room, with my battered brown suitcase at my side, and considered my problem. I was fresh out of college, without much working experience, flat broke, and homeless.

Through the waiting room windows I could see across Fifth Street to the dingy store fronts, where, presently, seeing the wire-grated glass of a hock shop, I began wrestling with some sentiment.

The pawnbroker fingered my watch, the one Aunt Kate had given me for Christmas in my sophomore year at O.S.C., with the air of a supercilious Jeeves.

“Certainly not more than twelve-fifty,” he said.

“My aunt paid a hundred for it!”

“The case is rather badly dented, as you can see.” During my last year in college, when I edited the campus daily, I used to sit at the typewriter groping for ideas and whang the case against the base of the machine.

“Okay,” I said, and the pawnbroker gave me the money and a ticket.

I went to a cafeteria around the corner on Market Street and filled up on two orders of turkey sandwiches and three cups of coffee and a bear claw. Then I sat back, lit up my curved-stem pipe, and studed my problem from a more objective point of view.

Aunt Kate, poor dear, would never have approved of my coming to San Francisco, nor would she have been fooled by my saying there were more opportunities for newspaper jobs in California.

“You really came down to see what Edwin could do for you, didn’t you, Dan?” she would say, horrified. “But you mustn’t go to him. Stay away from Edwin. Do for yourself. For the good of your soul, Dan!”

“That’s Portland prejudice, Aunt Kate,” I thought.

It was getting night outside, and I was alone in a strange city, and the cure for the growing coldness in my heart was only twenty feet away, in a telephone booth.

A woman answered first, with an exciting, husky voice, and when I asked for Edwin, she told me to wait.

“Edwin?” I asked, when a man’s voice answered. “This is Dan.”

“Dan who?”

“Dan Gentry. Your stepson. From Portland.”

“Oh, Dan!” The warmth in his voice made the city stop being strange and cold. “Are you in town? Never mind, I know where that cafeteria is. I’ll come right down and get you. No trouble at all. Just stay where you are, boy!”

I went out on the sidewalk then, and enjoyed watching the city lights grow brighter as the evening darkened.

I felt fine. Edwin must have.connections in this city. Maybe he could even get me on a newspaper. It felt good to have somebody interested in me again. Since Aunt Kate’s death, in the middle of my senior year, the world had turned pretty indifferent. Especially after the money ran out.

A tall girl in a red coat went by, giving me an invitational jiggle and glance.

“Sorry, honey, I’m waiting for somebody,” I said. I always like to be tactful.

In a few minutes a long, yellow Cadillac drove up with a chauffeur at the wheel and Edwin jumped out of the back seat and seized me by both hands.

“Dan! My God how you’ve grown, son. You’re six feet, I’ll bet!”

“Six-one.”

“A little thin, but we’ll fix that! Come on, son, get in.”

He put my suitcase inside and we climbed after it, and the car started up Market Street.

Edwin swung around in the seat to get a better look at me in the passing lights, while I studied him. I didn’t know if he’d changed much, since I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years, and my early impressions were rather dim. He was lean, a little above middle height, with tight, durable features and a thin-lipped mouth — amazingly young-looking for a man who must be close to fifty. His hair was raven-black, and I wondered if he dyed it.

“You look very much like your mother,” he said. “Too bad she isn’t alive to see you now. She’d be proud of you. College man, eh? What field?”

“Journalism.”

“Good for you!”

“I try my hand at short stories, too. But right now I think newspaper experience would be valuable.”

“Well, well. We’ll have to see what we can find for you. Sorry to hear of Kate’s death in that automobile accident. I read about it. I wrote you, you know—”

“I know,” I said, embarrassed. Edwin had written me at least once a year as long as I could remember, and never once had I answered. Kate had forbidden it.

“Didn’t Kate leave you anything?” he asked, and I thought his eyes turned sharply probing.

“No, but then I didn’t expect her to. She had a grown son and daughter of her own, and besides, I thought I had a newspaper job all lined up in Portland after I graduated. But it blew up.”

“Well, I’m glad it did,” Edwin said, slapping me on the knee. “Because then you thought of me, and I’ve always been ready to help you. No, sir, Dan, there’s nothing like having a family to back you up!”


It took me a while to get to sleep that night, even though Edwin had given me a large, comfortable room overlooking a pleasant garden, with the ocean murmuring not far away.

I still hadn’t recovered from the awe I felt at the sight of Edwin’s manor-sized house, set amid acres of greenery, and my first meeting with the “family,” all of whom lived here in the big house with Edwin, and had done nothing to make me feel I was welcome.

“Will you be staying long?” Edwin’s daughter, Linda, had drawled when Edwin brought me into the library to meet — them. She was a slim, well-molded blonde, doubtless she of the sexy voice on the phone.

“He’s come to join the family, Linda,” Edwin said pointedly, as he warmed himself before the big fireplace.

Linda looked me over coolly, then turned and laid her hand on the arm of her brother, Fred.

“Maybe he can help you in the studio,” she said.

Fred, small and dark like his father, and sporting a Hitler-type moustache, gave me a fishy look.

“What do you do for a living?” he asked.

“He writes for a newspaper. We’ll find something to suit his talents.”

I could see Edwin was angry, even though he winked at me. “You see, Dan, we’re a very talented family, and we’ve all found — outlets. Linda is a model, Fred is a fine photographer, and Philip, at the piano there, is a musician, although he has other talents as well.”

Philip Ordway, Edwin’s nephew, was close to thirty, pale faced and sulky looking. He gave me a glance over the music rack that one might expect from a life-long enemy and executed an eloquent glissando. Then a gleam came into his eyes, and following his gaze, I saw a white-uniformed nurse enter the room, pushing a wheel chair in which sat an old woman.

“Ah, and here is Grandmother Owen,” Edwin said. “She wouldn’t remember you, Dan. She doesn’t know any body. She’s over ninety now, you know.”

I looked at the old woman sitting with a vacant smile, clearly senile, her hands plucking aimlessly at the white stole that matched her hair, and remembered her dimly.

She was my own grandmother on my mother’s side, no blood relation to anyone else in the room. All I could recall of her though, was that she’d given me a bag of licorice candy when I was very young. Now, even though her eyes were out of focus, they did not look away like the others as I smiled.

Suddenly a book which the old woman held loosely in her lap, slid with a thump to the floor, and as the nurse and I bent over to pick up the volume, our heads touched. I was aware of shining chestnut hair tucked neatly under a nurse’s cap, cool green eyes and a piquant, alert face.

“You’ve just bumped into Miss Fox,” Edwin said laughing. “She lives with us, and takes care of Grandmother. Miss Fox, my stepson, Dan.”

She smiled, and her friendly eyes warmed me hugely. The book the old lady had dropped was still open in my hands, revealing a signature written on one of the end papers — Maud. Owen.

The next moment, Edwin took the book from me and put it back into the old woman’s lap.

“Maud never lets go of that book,” Edwin said. “It contains reproductions of the paintings of Grandma Moses. She was absorbed in the work of Grandma Moses when she began to lose contact. That book seems to be the only object she’s clearly aware of.”

“I often think she’s painting pictures in her mind,” Miss Fox said, and I thought her speech fitted her — gentle, feminine, and clearly articulated.

“Maybe she’s not robbed of self-expression at that,” Edwin said. “She used to like to write, you know. Poems and things like that!”

Philip Ordway sounded a chord, as if to attract attention, and I saw he was watching Miss Fox, his face grinning like Pan, an open, libidinous gleam in his eyes.

Then Edwin clapped his hand on my shoulder.

“We want to make you feel welcome here, Dan. In time, we want you to become one of us!”

But listening to the pulsing surf now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be one of them. I knew that Linda, Fred, and Philip didn’t want me to be.

I must have dozed. A clock in the hall below chimed three, and then I heard the creak of the floorboard outside my door.

I slipped out of bed and tip-toed to the door, where I stood listening. Then I swung the door open as I flicked on the switch. The hall was empty, but from somewhere I heard the click of a latch.

The note was on the floor inside my threshold. It was folded and the message was block-printed in pencil on a piece of lined paper. It said:

Leave this house — don’t tell them where you’ve gone — for your own safety do this at once!

For a moment I got panicky. Then I took myself in hand and counted my money. I had a little over ten dollars, and I asked myself where I would go, what I would do.

And after thinking about it awhile, I got back into bed and tried to go to sleep again.


The next morning I had breakfast with Edwin and his nephew, Philip Ordway, in the big paneled dining room.

“My own youngsters like to sleep late,” Edwin said as he cracked his boiled egg. “Phil, here, of course, works with me at the office, and he has to get up.”

In the morning light, Edwin did not look as young as he had the night before. His hair was just as black, but his skin looked pouchy, and his eyes had that glazed, jellified look that one associates with over-indulgence.

“I spend the greater part of the day downtown,” he said, “but I want you to feel free to go and come as you please. I’ll give you a key.”

“What is your work, Edwin?” I asked.

There was a little noise on my left, and Philip’s egg cup went rolling across the linen tablecloth, the egg with it, leaving a thin trail of yellow yolk.

“Damn it,” Phil said, his pale face turning paler. “My knife slipped.”

The look of disgust in Edwin’s face as he glanced at his nephew set me talking to cover up the breach.

“Aunt Kate was never specific about what you did, except to say you were pretty well-to-do.”

I looked appreciatively around the luxurious dining room, the windows of which looked out on a sunken garden.

Edwin chuckled. “I’m just a merchant, Dan. I have — outlets — in all major cities in the far west, and at the moment I’m considering expansion to the east. Phil is working on that plan now, aren’t you, Phil?” There was a goading malice in Edwin’s tone.

Phil’s face got red again. He nodded, his mouth full of toast, and favored me with his vendetta look.

“Phil, I’m sure you’ve noticed, lacks a certain amount of charm,” Edwin went on. “But up to now he’s been reasonably efficient. Now I must leave you, Dan, but tonight you and I will go out on the town, and I’ll show you a San Francisco that’ll make you wonder why you wasted your years in Portland.” He slapped my shoulder and put down a fifty dollar bill in front of me. “For expenses, in case you want to wander.”

“But I can’t—”

“Go ahead! If your stepfather can’t give you a little present, who can?”

When he and Phil had gone I stared down at the fifty, still wondering how he’d earned it. Then I put the bill in my wallet and went out on the terrace that overlooked a lovely formal garden. On the far edge was a high, redwood-stake fence and beyond that, sand dunes, shining yellow against a misty blue sky.

Down near the end of the garden I could see Grandmother Owen sitting in her wheelchair, with Miss Fox beside her, on a bench. I went down to them.

As I appeared, my grandmother, looking fragile in a blue print dress, opened her eyes sleepily without focussing them, and then closed them again. Miss Fox gave me a friendly smile.

“Would it disturb her if I spoke to you?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. She’s pretty much like a three-year-old child, you know. She smiles at everyone, and everyone’s her friend.”

“She must demand a good deal of care.”

“She requires it, yes, but she doesn’t demand it. That makes it easier.”

I sat down beside Miss Fox and looked at the old lady’s hand lying relaxed on the arm of the wheelchair. It was remarkably unwrinkled for one so old, delicately tapered, with almond-shaped nails. There were dark, possibly medicinal, stains upon her fingertips.

I felt a sudden sadness, for her hands were exactly like Aunt Kate’s. On impulse, I took her hand in one of mine, while with the other I took the note out of my pocket and held it out to the nurse.

“Did you write this, Miss Fox?”

She read the note and I could see a deep flush spread over her features.

“No, I didn’t write it. Why should I? Where did you get it?”

“It was slipped under my door last night. Yours was the only really friendly face I’ve seen here, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else going to such trouble.”

For a moment Miss Fox seemed to be in conflict. Then her face cleared and she laid her hand on my arm.

“I may have no right to say this, Mr. Gentry, but I think you should follow its advice. You don’t belong here.”

“Why?”

“You mustn’t ask me that. I’m not acting very — professional.”

She made a movement as if to rise, but I restrained her.

“Miss Fox, I need your help.”

Grandmother Owen stirred in her chair and I released her hand.

“My father died when I was five,” I continued. “Shortly afterwards, my mother married Mr. Gentry, who was a widower with two children of his own, Linda and Fred. I remember I didn’t get along very well with them. When I was seven, I developed asthma and had to leave the city and go live with my mother’s sister Kate. I guess mother made the thing legal, because when Edwin tried to get me back later, after my mother’s death, he couldn’t do it. He used to write to me for years, but Kate would never let me answer. She said he was a man it was better to have nothing to do with. Those were her words. But she never let me know anything about him. I came here because I was homeless and penniless and jobless. Mr. Gentry is my stepfather, for what it’s worth. I must say he’s been kind to me. But, well, I’ve felt uneasy here from the first, and after I got this note—”

“I see.” Miss Fox’s voice was sympathetic. “I’ve only been here a month myself, Mr. Gentry, and all I can say is that I feel there is something wrong here. I can’t say what it is. Everybody’s very nice, but there’s something in the air, in every seemingly conventional remark. When I saw you last night, I knew you weren’t part of it. And somehow, I know you mustn’t let yourself become part of it!”

“Thanks. It’s nice to know you’ve thought that much about me, Miss — I can’t go on calling you Miss Fox when I feel so grateful and friendly towards you!”

“Felicia,” she said smiling.

“And please call me Dan. I’m going to keep an eye out for you while I’m here, anyway.”

“Oh, I’m in no danger!” Felicia said with a laugh.


I had to admit Edwin was a fine host that night as we hit the high spots. Linda came along, too, breathtaking in a low-cut lame dress, and apparently she had had a change of heart about me. She took my arm and snuggled up possessively, and halfway through the evening, when I had enough to drink to make me sociable, and we were pressed in a close embrace on the dance floor, I told her how glad I was that, although she was my stepsister, we weren’t really blood relations at all.

That seemed to amuse her, and she threw back her handsome head and laughed until other partners on the floor looked at us. I shook her a little and she subsided and pressed me secretly, and the look in her deep blue eyes thrilled me right down to the soles of the new Florsheims that I’d bought that afternoon with the money Edwin had given me.

We rolled home around three in the morning, all of us hilarious, and as I walked up the stairs to my room, I was glad I had developed a good head for liquor at college, and hadn’t disgraced myself in front of my relatives.

Inside my room there was another note on the floor that sobered me.

You are being tested. Do not succumb, or you are lost!

I took a shower and then went to bed. A little while later, while I lay still awake, there came a scratching at my door. I opened it, and Linda slipped in a thin nightdress and put her arms around my neck.

“I’m glad we’re not brother and sister, too, Dan,” she whispered in my ear.

And when she kissed me, I couldn’t help giving her what she’d come for.

At the breakfast table the next morning Edwin told me, “Fred will take charge of you today. He even got up early to do it!”

Fred, too, seemed to have had a turn of heart, for he smiled at me cheerfully now, his teeth looking large beneath his Hitler-like mustache.

“You interested in photography?” Fred asked.

“One year I was head photographer for the campus yearbook,” I said.

“Then we’ve got something in common. There’s a fine collection at the Legion of Honor — French and German schools. How about breezing out to the gallery with me?”

“Suits me.”

So around the middle of the morning, we jumped in Fred’s Volkswagen and sped over to the Legion of Honor and parked on the esplanade overlooking the Golden Gate. Then we sat in the car until the gallery opened, while Fred talked about the relative merits of foreign cars and I got thoroughly bored and thought Fred pretty much of a fool.

But once we got inside the gallery and I heard him discourse on photographic techniques and effects, I revised my opinion. He really knew his stuff. The pictures were the usual street scenes, still lifes, landscapes, portraits, nudes, but Fred made me see them in a new way, from the standpoint of composition, subject matter, and design. He was a natural teacher, and his explanations made photographic technique seem vital and easy. I noticed, however, he lingered mostly over the nudes.

“You ought to do some pretty stunning photo work yourself,” I said at last.

“I do. Would you like to see some?”

I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. Fortunately he suggested we go to lunch first, which gave me the advantage of viewing his collection on a full stomach. That gave me stamina, because on an empty stomach I get nervous and lose my self-control easily.

After lunch we returned to the big house and he led me to his studio at the back, on the main floor, a thickly-carpeted, heavily draped atelier two stories high, with a huge northern skylight. There were a lot of sofas and tables standing about, and Fred went to the east wall which was curtained like a proscenium, and took hold of a stout cord.

“Of course, you must judge these specimens purely from an artistic point of view,” he said, with a trace of a smirk. “If one loses himself in the subject matter, then he becomes blind to the subtler values, the raison d’etre of the medium, as it were.”

And with that he pulled the cord and revealed a gallery of sumptious pornographic art that was out of this world. But it was a super-pornographic art, with the devilish quality of genius in the lighting and arrangements of subjects, so that beyond the immediate significance of conjugating bodies and entwining limbs, there was often, in the subtle light and shadow, a total image which impressed me as a veritable archetype of evil. Looking at some of the latter, I felt a sense of disgust, as if I were recoiling from an invitation to participate in the lust and license pictured before me.

I took a deep breath and turned away, knowing I’d have to get out of Edwin’s house as soon as I could. At the same time, some instinct warned me against revealing my feelings to Fred.

“That’s some show,” I managed to say, with a smile.

Fred laughed delightedly, drew the curtain, and patted me fraternally on the shoulder.

“You’ll do,” he said, with the air of one giving a commendation.

I excused myself shortly and went up to my room and. started throwing things hastily into my suitcase. I still had thirty dollars out of the fifty Edwin had given me, plus ten of my own, and it would keep me, I hoped, until I could find something. When I got a job, I’d send the fifty back to Edwin with a note of thanks. Right now, I just wanted out.

I had my suitcase in my hand, my hat on my head, when I heard a woman’s voice crying out downstairs.

“Dan!”

I tossed my hat on the window seat, put the case inside my closet, and slipped into the hall.

“Dan!”

From below in the vestibule I could hear the sounds of a struggle, and I leapt down the stairs.

Philip Ordway had seized Felicia in his arms, and was trying to pull her into his room, and he was so busy, I don’t think he was aware of me until I gave him a judo chop on the neck. He flopped down across his threshold, and I pushed him inside and closed the door. Then I put my arm around Felicia and piloted her upstairs to my room.

“And you said you weren’t in any danger!” I said as she wept quietly. “This place is a pest hole. Listen, Felicia, I’m getting out. I’ve got my bag packed. Why don’t you come with me? This is no place for you, either!”

“Oh, I couldn’t leave Mrs. Owen,” she said, her hand at her breast, where two or three buttons of her uniform had been ripped away. “Besides, if I left without notice, I’d never get another position. And I need the money, too, Dan.”

“You don’t care if you stay in a place where you’ve been attacked?”

“I’m sure it won’t happen again. I’ll take better care of myself.”

“Like you did just now?”

She began to cry again, and I felt helpless. I got down on my knees and took her hands in mine.

“You go, Dan,” she said. “It isn’t right that you should stay here. I’ve got to. Mrs. Owen needs me. And I’ll be all right. I’ll report this to Mr. Gentry. He’s been very kind. I’m sure he’ll take care of me.”

That did it. The thought of Edwin taking care of Felicia stopped me cold, and I put all thoughts of leaving out of my mind.

“Never mind, Felicia,” I said firmly, cupping her chin in my hand. “I’ll be around to take care of you myself.”

I kissed her, and it was sweet.

And suddenly I wished that what had happened between me and Linda — hadn’t.


That evening Philip Ordway was not at supper nor, much to my relief, was Linda. Fred kept telling a lot of off-color stories until his father silenced him. Then, after a demitasse of Turkish coffee, Edwin motioned me to follow him into the library. I sat down on the sofa near the fire as he closed the big doors and locked them. Then after offering me a cigar, he sat down opposite me in an armchair.

He puffed in silence for a while, studying me until I felt uncomfortably isolated on that big sofa.

Edwin didn’t look like a genial bon vivant and host tonight. His welcoming eyes had turned calculating, and there was a glint of remorselessness in their dark depths. Then he smiled, and the hardness seemed to vanish.

“I’m very pleased with you, Dan,” he said. “First, you’re no prig. That gives me hope that you’ll be able to agree to my point of view on life and business. Second, you can make a quick decision, and you’re not afraid of violence.”

“You mean Phil?”

“Yes, the young ass. He’s through. I’ve been dissatisfied with his work for some time, and today, when he sneaked away from the office to come here, and — bah! A routine job is all he’s fit for. I want you, Dan, to take his place!”

“What sort of job is it?” I asked him.

“You like to write. I need reports. You’ll visit all the western cities where I have my outlets, and make a careful assessment of the activities of my dealers there. You will send the reports in once a week, and I’ll pay you per word what no newspaper on earth would pay you!”

“Sounds good. But what is your business, Edwin?”

He rose and went to a row of long drawers built into the wall. Unlocking one of them he took out three objects which he laid on the sofa beside me. The first was an egg-shaped piece of brown glass resembling a hand grenade, with a loop of wire at the top. The second object looked like a black pot holder enclosed in a plastic envelope, and the third was a blue steel tool of some kind, like a screw driver without a handle, and with a curious pattern of notches at one end.

I studied them a few seconds and then looked my question at Edwin.

“They are three of the hundreds of similar items which my company manufactures,” he said. “Those simple things range in price from fifty to two hundred dollars.”

“What makes them so valuable?”

“They supply a need, Dan.” He sat down on the sofa beside me. “First, let’s admit there is good and evil in the world.”

“Okay.”

“There’s nothing you or I can do about it, is there?”

“Not personally, perhaps, but—”

“We’re talking about individual enterprise, Dan. Evil is evil, and that is that. And where I can be sentimental about keeping an old lady like your grandmother in my house because your mother asked me to I can be ruthlessly practical about the fact of evil. There are moral people and immoral people, and nothing I can do will change that fact. And isn’t it true that business men make a profit out of producing things the good people need? They print Bibles, for instance, they manufacture religious artifacts, reproduce works of art, record fine music, and so on. But the natural criminals have their needs, too. All moralizing aside, who supplies them? A handful of manufacturers, in a very haphazard way. Well, I have organized an enterprise which supplies those needs very adequately. Whatever the appetite the criminal mind has, whatever evil desire, we supply the manufactured means of gratifying it.”

I just stared as he took the blue steel tool out of my hand.

“This is the most mundane example. A burglar tool of the most ingenious and effective design, which has our money-back guarantee. It retails for a hundred and fifty dollars.”

He picked up the brown glass egg.

“Arsonists will go to any length to satisfy their passion, especially if they can indulge it without risk of detection and. yet assure a quick and satisfying blaze. This item is so designed. And we ask two hundred dollars for it.”

“And they pay it?”

“Arson is often a sexual appetite, and not circumscribed to the poor alone.” Edwin picked up the black cloth in the plastic case. “But this is quite the most expensive, A cloth in a vacuum receptacle, saturated with an especially prepared fluid which, when held under the nose of the victim, instantly brings semi-unconsciousness and acts as well as an aphrodisiac, with no danger to the attacker. For the rapist, of course.”

I jumped to my feet. “You call this a business?” I yelled. “You want me to be part of it? I’d rather have a good clean flunky job, like cleaning out bed pans! You can go to hell, Edwin. Kate was right. You are a man to stay away from. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m getting out of here.”

The door was locked, of course, and the key was gone. When I turned, Edwin stood looking at me, his face cold and dispassionate, like something you’d see staring out at you at the Steinhart aquarium.

“I didn’t think I’d made a mistake. I thought sure you’d be one of us. Are you so stupid, Dan, that you don’t understand? You can’t leave now.”

I stared at him and then my legs got weak and I sat down. It was true, knowing what I knew, I had either to join his organization, or—

“Oh, yes,” Edwin answered my unspoken question. “If you don’t take the job, there’s only one way out, and I shall not hesitate to use it. I am building a tremendous business, and I can’t have you knock it down like a child playing with blocks.”

“Suppose I kept my mouth shut?”

“Unless you take part, I cannot trust you, Dan. Surely you can see that.” He shook his head sadly. “I wish you’d be like the rest of the family, son. We all pull together here. Well, you sleep on it, Dan.”

He unlocked the door.

“Please don’t try to get away.”


I left the library then and went upstairs to my room. And found the third note:

Do not do anything foolish. Stay where you are.

I wadded the note up angrily and thrust it into my pocket. Who, in that inimical household, might have written it? Certainly not Edwin. Linda? Perhaps. Felicia? I didn’t think so. Fred? I doubted whether Fred thought much about anybody but himself. Philip? Never.

Who, then?

In exasperation I lay down on the top of my bed in my shirt and trousers and, after a little while, dozed off.

I awoke with a start, a clear picture in my mind: the open end papers of the book on Grandma Moses, with the name Maud Owen, heavily block printed, like the notes I had received.

At the same time, a tactile memory returned, of the old lady’s hand in mine, when I spoke to Felicia in the garden. At first it had lain like a quiescent bird, then it stirred as I spoke to Felicia, until finally, when I had asked for help, grandmother’s hand had become so tense, I had released it!

Grandmother Owen was not senile. She was pretending! I was sure now it was she who had written those notes. But who had slipped them under my door? Felicia?

I sat up in bed. I had to get out of my stepfather’s house, and I had to get Felicia and my grandmother out, too!

Outside my door I could hear someone walking heavily up and down. There was a patch of light on my ceiling, shining up from the terrace below my window, and when I peeked out, I could see a man below, a stranger in khaki trousers and windbreaker, sitting in a chair reading a newspaper.

But my window was in shadow, and I saw a broad ledge that led, on my left, to the south-west corner of the house.

Presently, having put on my best dark blue suit for camouflage, I climbed out on the ledge and started shuffling, back pressed against the wall, towards the corner of the building. The guard looked up once, and I thought he’d seen me, but then he went on reading the newspaper. I slipped around the corner, where, finding an ivy trellis, I climbed down to the ground and stood listening.

The pounding of the surf was amplified by a low cloudiness, and from a distance I could hear the whine of the beach line bus, starting up from a passenger stop.

Felicia’s room, which adjoined Grandmother Owen’s, lay directly under my own, and the window stood partly open.

I climbed across the sill and then hesitated as the blackness pressed against my eyes like a mask. I heard the tick of an alarm dockland a sigh amid the rustle of bedclothes. My outstretched hand touched something, the shade of a lamp. I felt for its switch and turned the lamp on. Felicia was sitting up in bed with the blanket at her chin, staring at me.

“Oh, Dan!” She got out of bed, and slipped into a kimona. “I wasn’t sleeping, I was worrying about you. Mr. Gentry ordered me to keep Mrs. Owen and myself to our rooms tonight. What’s happened?”

“No time to talk. Get your clothes oh. We’re getting out of here. This the door to grandmother’s room?”

“Dan, there’s something—”

“I know. She’s only pretending to be out of touch. But why?”

She ignored my question. “If you’re in danger, Dan, she said she would save you.”

I snorted. “Save me? I’m twenty-two years old and able-bodied. How could a little wisp of a woman like that save me?”

Before Felicia could answer, there was a sharp rapping from the hall door.

“Quick,” I said, lunging for the door to grandmother’s room. But I had barely time to get it open before there came a crash and the splintering wood, and Edwin was standing in the hall doorway, his face as murderous as the black muzzle of the gun he pointed at me.

“You’ve made your intentions very clear, Dan,” he said.

Fred entered with Linda then, and they both looked at me with loathing, as if I had betrayed the family in some unspeakable fashion. Philip came too, loitering in the doorway.

“A general meeting of the board of directors?” I asked.

“You might call it that,” Edwin said. “We just took a vote about what to do with you, Philip.”

His nephew made a halfhearted attempt to come to attention.

“Philip, I’m giving you a chance to reinstate yourself.” He put the gun in Phil’s hand. “Take Dan down to the furnace room. We’ll stay here until it’s over.”

“What about her?” Phil was a big shot now.

“That’s up to Miss Fox. We’ll talk about it while you’re gone.”

Phil jabbed the gun in my back, and at that moment, Grandmother Owen appeared at her doorway, and came teetering into the room.

“I’ll just sit down, if you don’t mind,” she said, as she lowered her fragile figure into a slipper chair. “I’m not much used to walking about, you know.”

Edwin, with nothing to say for once, simply stared at her.

“Now put away that silly gun, Philip. You must let Dan alone. He’s a good boy and deserves saving. Don’t look so surprised, Edwin. When you started talking about having me institutionalized about three years ago, I knew it was because your secrets were getting too scandalous for me to hear, and you began to fear me. But I did not wish to be put away; I found it more interesting here, so long as you didn’t try to harm anyone in my family. So I became senile, you see.”

“And all this time—” Edwin managed to say.

“Yes, I have been aware of your activities. In a way, though, they’ve been a blessing to me, because even at my age, I wanted to express myself — not in painting, like Grandma Moses, but in writing. Like Dan.”

She gave me an affectionate look that reminded me of Aunt Kate. “And here, all around me, was a perfect subject. I would be the historian of Edwin’s criminal family. So I wrote it all out in my book. I call it My Life Among the Sinners. It runs three hundred and fifty pages!”

“Where is that book!” Edwin took a step towards the old lady’s bedroom.

“Oh, not in there. My last nurse was in on my secret, just as Felicia is. The other nurse mailed it for me, to Harper and Row. It must be over a month ago now.”

“Harper and Row!”

“Oh, yes. It’s all hand written, in ink, and held together with a ribbon. And I wrote a nice little letter with it, swearing on my honor it was all true!”

So those had not been medicinal stains on my grandmother’s fingertips. They were ink stains!

Fred said: “They won’t even read the manuscript, dad.”

Edwin looked relieved, but only for a moment.

“But I also made a condensed article and sent it to Harper’s Magazine,” Grandmother Owen said serenely. “That was about a month ago, too. And just the other day, the day that Dan arrived, I sent a copy of the article to the San Francisco Police department. You mailed it, didn’t you, Felicia?”

Felicia nodded.

“I don’t believe any of it!” Linda said. “She’s just making all this up to save Dan.”

“Oh, no,” the old lady assured her. “I know they received it all right — the police.”

“How do you know that?” Edwin stood stiffly over my grandmother as if he were about to strike her. I watched my chance with Philip, who had moved off from me. His gun was drooping, his eyes were on his uncle.

Grandmother Owen smiled sweetly up at Edwin.

“They told me they received it when I telephoned them, not ten minutes ago. They ought to be here by now.”

At that instant, I sliced my hand down on Phil’s wrist and the gun went clattering to the floor. Then I had it in my hand, and the good guys had the lead.

Edwin faced me with a face white and twitching as grandmother held up one thin hand. “Yes, I think I hear them now, Edwin.”

There came the screech of brakes in the driveway, and then a couple of shots, and, during the brief time that Edwin’s guards took their work seriously, only three things happened in the room.

Edwin started cursing.

Felicia gave me a little hug.

And, from across the room, Grandmother Owen winked at me affectionately.

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