The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

Wait and See

Originally published in The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1965.

The hotel was a tower of glass and white stone rising above the sand and tile sea. High in the tower in a room overlooking the beach, Kate Wilde faced her sister across a vast distance of ten feet and ten years, a virtual stranger trying with quiet desperation to find the magic word or gesture that would wipe out a decade of silence. But there was no word, no gesture, no magic at all. Kate, with her hard, embittered mind and strong body burned brown by the semi-tropical sun, could hardly recognize the frail and diminishing woman she faced.

In the long decade since they had parted, she had heard from Ruth only three times. A letter had come when Ruth’s husband had been killed in an accident. Another had followed long afterward when Ruth, motivated by some obscure yearning of blood for blood, had felt impelled to confess her own illness and encroaching death. Kate had been unmoved by the first letter, and hardly touched by the second.

Ruth’s death had not much mattered to her then, and it did not matter now. She hoped that it would impose, when it came, no claim that could not be readily adjusted and forgotten.

The third letter, which had arranged this reunion, had reached Kate only two weeks ago, forwarded from her former to her present address, which was a cheaper place in a meaner street. The years in Miami had not been easy, although there had been good intervals, but she had lived her own life and had no complaints about the kind of life it had been. Lifting her eyes, she stared out the shining glass seafront wall to where the white gulls soared between the Atlantic and the sun.

“Why have you never married?” Ruth said.

“Because I didn’t choose to,” Kate said. Then, aware of the harshness of her reply, she added, “I never seemed to meet the right man.”

“You were always difficult to please, Kate.”

“Was I? I don’t remember.”

“I suppose I was too, however. After Jim was killed, I never wanted to marry again.”

“You were lucky that it wasn’t necessary. He must have left you comfortably off.”

“A bit better than that, as a matter of fact. He left me more than a million dollars, and I’ve taken good care of it.”

“That much?” Kate’s eyes, following the gulls, were as blue and clear and hard as the sky beyond them. “I didn’t realize.”

“You should have come to me after Jim’s death, Kate. There was plenty for both of us. I would have been glad to share.”

“I don’t like Chicago. It gets too cold there. I’ll never go back.”

“Are you so determined? I was hoping you’d go home with me.”

“Home? This is home. I have no other.”

“Won’t you come, Kate? I’d be grateful if you would.”

“Why should I?”

“You’re my sister, and I’m dying.”

“So you said in your letter. I’m sorry.”

“I’ve grown used to the idea. It only matters, really, because of Little Jim. Whatever will become of him?”

“With a million dollars?” Kate’s voice assumed for a moment a faint note of derision. “I should imagine that he’ll manage somehow.”

“He’s only a little boy, Kate. Only nine years old. He’ll be no more than ten when I’m gone.”

“There must be someone to look after him. His father’s people or someone.”

“Only an aunt and uncle who are not greatly concerned. I want you to do it, Kate. You’re my only sister. I’d feel so much better if I knew it were going to be you.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Will you at least stay here in the hotel with us for a week?”

“Yes. I promised you that, and I’ll stay.”

“You’ll love Little Jim. I’m sure you will. You’ll change your mind before the week is gone.”

“You may hope so, if you wish. I doubt it.”

“I want Little Jim to go on living in our house in Chicago, of course. It’s our home, and he loves it there. It’s where he belongs. But you could bring him down here sometimes to visit. Wouldn’t that be enough to keep you happy?”

“Living on charity is unsatisfactory, however you look at it.”

“It wouldn’t be charity, Kate. Not really. Everything will be left to Little Jim when I die, but there’s a provision in my will for you.”

“Oh? What’s left after everything?”

“If Little Jim should die, it will all come to you.”

“What on earth possessed you to make such a provision?”

“I’ve told you, Kate. I keep telling you. You’re my sister.”

“I see. And I keep forgetting.” The sharp edge of derision was again in Kate’s voice, a glint of bitter amusement in her eyes. “Well, no matter. We must at least enjoy our week together. Is Little Jim on the beach?”

“Yes. I promised that we’d join him there. Would you like to go down?”

“God, yes! This air-conditioning depresses me. Let’s go and lie in the sun.”

“Little Jim,” said Ruth, “this is your Aunt Kate.”

Little Jim squinted in the bright sunlight. His thin face, despite the squint, was grave and somehow composed. His body, which had been heavily coated with lotion, was straight and strong, but it was conspicuously pale among all the brown bodies on the beach, and it seemed, therefore, excessively naked where near-nakedness was almost a cult. He dug his toes into the hot sand and extended a hand.

“Hello, Aunt Kate,” he said.

“How are you, Little Jim? Do you like to be called that?”

“I guess so. Everyone does it. Father was Big Jim and I’m Little Jim.”

“I see.”

“Are you coming back home with Mother and me?”

“Why do you ask? Do you expect me to?”

“Mother said you might.”

“We’ll see. For the present, we must simply enjoy ourselves. Have you been swimming?”

“Not yet. I promised Mother that I’d wait for you and her.”

“Well, here we are, and you can swim all you like. Do you know how?”

“Oh, yes. I haven’t been this year, but one never forgets.”

“That’s true.”

“Would you like to come in with me?”

“Not just now. I’ll lie here in the sand with your mother. This is your first visit to Florida, isn’t it? How do you like it here?”

“It’s nice to visit. I wouldn’t want to live here, though. I like living in Chicago.”

“Run along, Little Jim,” Ruth said. “But don’t go too far out.”

“It’s quite shallow for a long way,” Kate said. “He’ll be all right.”

Turning, Little Jim ran down the beach past a little girl who sat digging intently in the sand just above the reach of the quiet tide. About twenty yards away, posed like a bronze model beside his observation tower, the lifeguard was allowing himself to be admired by a blond in a bikini. The admiration was apparently mutual and absorbing. On the terrace of the hotel, sun-soaked guests were dispersed at tables or stretched indolently in lounge chairs. Voices and laughter and the clinking of glasses drifted over the beach.

“He’s a nice boy,” Kate said.

“Yes,” said Ruth.

“But he needs more sun. He’s far too pale.”

“He had a bad experience earlier this summer. He was very ill for a little while.”

“Oh? I didn’t know, of course.”

“He nearly died, and it was all so cruelly absurd. The doctor said he has something called acute anaphylactic reaction.”

“It sounds deadly, but I have no idea what it is.”

“It’s being hyper-sensitive to something that is ordinarily not dangerous at all. Sometimes it’s a drug of some sort. In Little Jim’s case, it’s the venom of certain stings.”

“Stings?”

“Yes. We were in the country one day, outside Chicago, and Little Jim was stung twice by wasps. At least, we think they were wasps. Anyhow, Little Jim nearly died before we could get him to a doctor. It was frightening and horrible.”

Remembering the fright and the horror, Ruth shuddered in the bright warmth, the skin visibly crawling on her frail and wasting body. Turning away, she spread a vivid towel on the white sand and lay down upon it. She closed her eyes against the glare.

“But surely something can be done about it,” Kate said.

“Oh, yes.” Ruth’s eyes remained closed, her thin face haggard and old in the merciless light. “Something called hyposensitization. Injections of the allergen over a period of time. But one can never be certain that it will be effective in all instances. Only wait and see.”

Her fragmented speech was an effect of weariness. Waiting herself for death, alone and lonely wherever she was, she was resigned to waiting as an integral quality of truncated living.

How much time had passed?

Lying on the glittering beach beneath the high, hot sun, Kate raised her head and turned to see the frail body of her sister. Ruth’s thin arms were spread wide on the sand, as if open to receive the last precious degree of solar heat, and her meager bosom rose and fell in a rhythm of rationed breath. Kate had a sudden notion that she was in that instant slowly bleeding to death, her thin and colorless blood seeping away through an invisible wound into the hot absorbent sand. With a feeling of faint and fastidious revulsion, she turned her eyes again into the glare of the sun. Between the sun and her, a gull slanted to a landing. Higher and farther out, above the sea and between the beach and the remote, discernible curve of Earth, a small airplane dragged across the sky a series of connected letters that spelled out the name of a nightclub in downtown Miami.

Beside his observation tower, the lifeguard still posed for the blond in the bikini. She tilted her face and laughed with her lips stretched wide, and the sun struck sparks from her polished teeth. The little girl still dug in the sand just out of the reach of the climbing tide, and beyond the girl in the blue water of the Atlantic, moving slowly into Kate’s range of vision with an awkward flailing of arms, was the head of a swimming boy.

It was Little Jim, she saw, and he was really quite far out. Perhaps too far. It was apparent from his flailing strokes that he was not a strong or practiced swimmer, and the angle of his course was taking him steadily farther from shore. He seemed, moreover, to be swimming with intent, a steadfast purpose, as if he had set himself a goal this side of Cuba. And so he had. Ahead of him some ten yards, afloat on the water, was a shimmering blue balloon, a pale and delicate transparency of seductive beauty. A small boy, an innocent inlander, he was straining to reach and to hold a casual wonder of the miraculous alien sea.

Kate sat erect in the sand, her lean body tense and a cry of warning rising in her throat. The shimmering bauble, blown in by the winds, was a Portuguese Man-of-War, that strange drifter of tropical waters that trails below its seductive pneumatophore a colony of long filaments armed with powerful nettle-cells. The multiple stings of the Man-of-War, she knew, were capable of causing paralysis, and perhaps even, in rare instances, death. What would be their effect on a small boy who was critically allergic to the sting of a wasp?

If Little Jim should die, it will all come to you.

Was that Ruth’s voice? Hadn’t she said that? Had she now repeated the words, lying sick and wasted on her bright towel in the white sand, or were they an echo in Kate’s brain?

Down the beach, the lifeguard lifted his eyes with longing to the sun-soaked guests on the hotel terrace.

Close enough to touch, arms spread to embrace the warmth, Ruth whimpered like an uneasy child in her half-sleep.

Out in the blue water, the ten yards were now five.

Deliberately, her unuttered cry a stone in her throat, Kate lay back in the sand beside her sister.

The shadow of a gull passed over her closed eyes.