by Max Brand
Nancy, leaning back in the comfort of her chair with her hands turned palm up on the broad arms of it, looked about her with half-closed eyes of contentment.
"Why do I see you so seldom, Nora?" she asked. "Why are there such long times between?"
"Because I'm the only living thing in a dead house," said Nora, adding fresh coffee and cold water to the big pot, "and because youngsters are the great ones for forgetting."
"Oh, but I never forget you; only it's a long way out here," explained Nancy.
"Don't answer me back, but be still and let me look at you, darling," said Nora.
"Ah, see there!" said Nancy, pointing. "You've brought company into the old house at last."
An old fox hound with his eyes abased by sorrowful wisdom and his ribs lean with age came limping into the kitchen through the porch door, trailing a forepaw. He begged permission with humble head and slowly wagging tail, then slunk to a pad by the stove and curled up on it. His attention followed Nora wherever she moved.
"It's not that I think any more of dogs than I ever did," said Nora. "The dirty things make a waste of cleaning in the house and a waste of time all through the lives of their masters."
"You're forgetting Champion," said Nancy.
"I'm forgetting nothing."
"But you loved him."
"I never did once, at all. But I loved the silly look of you when you were with him, was all. The great lout scattering his hair through the house and his stomach as uneasy as a weather-vane! But when I saw this poor devil skulking in the yard with his lame foot a week ago, I took him in, not because I wanted him here on my hands, but because I couldn't bear driving him away. I despise a beaten dog or a begging man, but I can't help putting my hand in my purse, Nancy, the more shame to me."
She changed the subject by pointing suddenly to Kildare, as though she were inclined to include him among the beggars.
"What is this one now?" she demanded. "You haven't been the grand young fool and thrown out big Charlie Herron, have you?"
"Hush, Nora. Of course not. But Johnny Stevens is a very dear friend of mine."
"And that's all? Driving about with you in the middle of the night to the ends of the world? Oh, hush yourself, Nancy, and don't try to be hushing me. There are two kinds of girls in the world: the one kind are the careful and the others are the fools. I'm going to roll out some biscuits for you, sweet."
"I could eat them, Nora."
"There was never a day when you couldn't and wouldn't," said Nora. "Ah, God, I remember the old times! You climbed and ran and fought—and lied—like a boy. And you were as hungry as your own mischief day and night."
Kildare, entirely out of the conversation by this time, crossed the kitchen to the dog and began to examine the forepaw on which it would put no weight. The pad was soft and contracted as a sure sign that the limping had continued for some time. Nora, in the meantime, was mixing biscuit dough with the strong sure hands which make speedy work of every task. She was in the midst of chopping out the well-rolled layer into convenient circles for the baking pan when another thought made her dust her hands and rush out of the room, exclaiming: "I almost clean forgot what I've been saving for you, darling. Wait here this minute."
"She's a sweet old thing, isn't she?" asked Nancy.
"She needs a lot of knowing," answered Kildare.
"Oh, but she'd die for the people she loves."
"Maybe she would," agreed Kildare, "or kill them with kindness."
"Now what do you mean by that?" asked Nancy, puzzled. But here Nora returned, beaming, and holding something with both hands against her breast.
"What do you think I have here?" she asked.
"An envelope full of old lavender."
"Oh, it's something just twice as sweet."
"I can't guess, Nora."
"Where's your brain gone, then, if you can't guess more than once? Sweetheart, it's her picture when she was your own age and as like you as ever was—before even Paul Messenger came into her life, the poor lamb—before ever she was taken in by the dirty doctors that were the death of her in the end..."
Kildare looked sharply up at this. What he had just heard might open a thousand doors of his riddle. Nancy had taken the picture into her hands, but Kildare made sure that she gave it only the briefest glance. It seemed that whatever Nora found of beauty in it was all a blank for the girl. There must even have been something sharply distasteful, for she lowered the picture at once to her lap.
"Have I hurt you with it, Nancy dear?" asked the old nurse. "How am I ever to know about you? The one minute you're as rough as a horse jumping fences and the next you're as tender as a kitten a week old and its eyes still blue with blindness. Give me back the picture, dear."
"No, Nora. I want it. Of course I want it," said Nancy, and yet Kildare could have sworn that she did not mean what she said.
Nora, having laid the rounds of biscuit-dough in the big baking pan, slammed home the door of the oven upon it.
"In twenty minutes we'll be at the table," she said. "Will you have coffee now, child?"
Here it was that Kildare's hand, abandoning the gingerly examination of the dog's paw, rose and began to fumble at his shoulder. The hound suddenly cried out on an almost human note of pain. Nora, whirling from the stove, exclaimed, with an accusing finger pointed: "How did you find the pain was in the shoulder, young man? Are you a doctor, whatever?"
"Nora, don't be silly," said Nancy.
"I was only petting the poor old fellow," lied Kildare.
"Petting? It didn't have the look of petting. It had the look of questions you were asking with the tips of your fingers. You've found the seat of the pain and look if the poor old dog isn't trembling still! Nancy, your young John Stevens is a doctor or I was born a liar."
"You were born a liar then," said Nancy serenely. "He's more apt to need a doctor than to be one."
"Have it your own way," growled Nora. She made some amends by saying: "I'm sure there's no insult in asking a man if he's a doctor. Isn't most of the world proud to be one, after all?"
But Kildare felt that an arrow had whizzed close to his ear, and he could tell by the angry look of the nurse that a suspicion was still harboured in her mind.
* * *
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY got through the breakfast happily enough with reminiscences of the old days which gave Kildare not an inch of ground to stand on during the talk. However, he had a chance to see the picture of Nancy's mother which Nora had just given to the girl. She looked as like Nancy as a sister, but she was made with a far greater refinement of feature. She lacked some of Nancy's expanse of forehead, but there was no sulky weight around her mouth; she had, instead, that radiant sweetness of face which seems to have gone out, in the very young, with the introduction of the one-piece bathing suit. Today the face is only one part of the familiar features. No matter how Kildare considered the picture he could not see the slightest reason for the manner in which Nancy had winced from the sight of it. Once more he felt, keenly, that he had found an arrow pointing forward to his goal, no matter how far away it might be.
The bright slant of the sun into the room made Nancy remember how the day was running on at last. She said: "I'd almost forgotten that I have to talk to you alone, Nora..."
"If the doctor will wait for us here, then—" said Nora.
"I'll go outside into the sun," answered Kildare, and left the house for the open air.
The mildness of the preceding evening still hung in the air. There was warmth enough to draw up a ground mist like that of spring, filling the hollows with a blue ghost of water and turning the horizon pale. The need for sleep grew suddenly in him; an ache fastened on the base of his brain and would not be rubbed away; but still he was satisfied, for in this old house he felt that he had come almost in touching distance of the solution of his mystery. That great mind of Gillespie's, looking with the inward and the outward eyes, already would have come to a definite conclusion perha
ps; but the mind of Gillespie was lost to him for ever!
It seemed to Kildare, as that wretched aching extended through his heart, that he was shrinking almost physically into featureless obscurity. He had become a tiny object which the eye might lose entirely in a landscape like this. He had been growing like a tree. Now his tap-root was out. It was a sharp grief that left a pain in his throat, and the cry that he heard might almost have come from his own lips.
The sound of it made a great echo in his brain, therefore, before he realised that it had come from the house. That wailing cry, high-pitched on a note of sorrow and horror, might have come either from the girl or the nurse. His impulse was to rush into the house. Perhaps the mystery was being bared at this very moment. He had to hold himself hard. The outcry had ended. The quiet of the morning gradually advanced about him with a hypocritical gentleness, again, but still his nerves were shuddering with the memory of that outcry from the house. It was too ugly to be given credence. An animal, unendurable pain had been in it, and yet something of the girl's voice was also in the sound.
He lighted a cigarette and began to walk up and down briskly. In spite of himself his step slowed and he found himself again standing beside the steps, looking at the brown grass, close-clipped between the stones of the old path. There had been almost too much life on this place, he was thinking, so that ancient trails and new were inextricably intermingled, the old patterns obscuring the fresh. After a moment his face grew cold with perspiration. He pulled out a handkerchief and scrubbed the moisture away. Then he heard the footfalls coming through the interior of the house.
The door, as it opened, showed him Nora on the threshold with her arm around the girl. He knew at once that it was Nancy who had felt the stroke of grief or of terror. She had been turned to a face of stone.
"I won't come down with you to the car, darling," said Nora, in a weeping voice.
"No, Nora," said the girl quietly.
"Ah, God, that this should come to us!" whispered the nurse.
"Hush, Nora."
"I'll hush my mouth, but I can't hush my poor heart," said Nora faintly. "God keep you and bless you. Will you remember what I've said to you?"
"Yes," said the girl, looking at the world with her empty eyes.
"You'll come again tomorrow?"
"Yes, I'll come."
"Good-bye then, my sweet lamb."
"Good-bye," said Nancy. When she was half a step away, she turned again and kissed the wet face of Nora. Then she came smoothly down the steps with a smile prepared for Kildare. "After all, it's pretty late," she was saying. "I suppose we ought to hurry back, Johnny?"
It was this smiling, it seemed to Kildare, that proved the infinite distance she had receded from him since he last was with her. She had been close enough for him almost to touch her thoughts, but now he was removed, as though by a strange language, far from everything that was in her mind. She could not see her own white look and for that reason, of course, she tried to deceive him with her smile and her quiet voice.
To explain the scene at the doorway she said, as they settled into the coupé: "Poor Nora—some of them never learn control—at every little pain they break down. You've noticed that, Johnny, haven't you?"
He said: "Don't talk, Nancy. I know you're sick to the heart. But don't make yourself talk."
He felt her startled, straining eyes fixed upon him almost suspiciously as the car started and he ran through the gears.
He added: "It's all right. I'm not going to ask any questions."
"God bless you, Johnny," she said.
She lay back against the cushion utterly spent.
"Nobody else," she whispered. "Nobody in the world would be like you about it—because none of the rest—none of them know what pain is, do they?"
He said nothing. He did not speak a word all the way back into the city, but drove along softly so that she could relax. She lay as though sleeping, always a white face bruised with purple around the eyes. Once the freshening pain in her mind brought a faint moan from her lips. Kildare, at that, put a steadying arm about her and she let her head lean against his shoulder. He drove on like that for a time, slowly, and when she sat up, he removed his arm without a word. So nothing was said between them all the way back to the city.
When they came into her father's house she looked up at him with that faint, sick smile, saying good night. Kildare held her hand for a moment.
He said: "Something's hit you pretty hard. I don't know what and I'm not asking you any questions. But if there's anything you want to do about it, will you let me try to help, Nancy?"
She read his face from left to right and back again, a great and calm affection in her eyes.
"There's nobody else in the world that I'd turn to," she said.
He digested that speech and the connotations of it on his way upstairs; it meant that she would turn to him before she would to her father or to big Charles Herron.
It was a quarter to ten when he tapped on the door of Messenger. Messenger himself pulled the door open quickly and passed a hand over the troubled corrugations of his face as he saw Kildare.
"It's been a long night," said Messenger. "Come in!"
Kildare went in, looking rather vaguely about him. "There's something to drink over there on the table," said Messenger.
Kildare sniffed the pungency of good Scotch and poured out a stiff drink. It went down like water. He took another, lighted a cigarette, and sat down with it. All he could think about was the taste of the smoke and fire as the Scotch worked into him more deeply. A warm, friendly mist was forming across his brain.
"You're dead tired. You're dead," said Messenger.
"I'm all right," said Kildare.
"Can you tell me about Nancy?"
"Pretty soon. I know a little more. I want to ask you a few questions. A short time ago she sold her horse, didn't she?"
"Yes."
"A fine mare she was very fond of—a good jumper and all that?"
"That's true."
"What reason did she give?"
"It troubled me at the time very much," said Messenger. "I think she said that horses were all right, but that horsy people were a great bore. But it didn't ring true. That chestnut had been a great thing in her life."
"You can't tell what suddenly made Nancy change her mind about riding?"
"No."
"Has Nancy complained of bad health or pains?"
"Headaches. Otherwise, she's always been a tough, healthy specimen."
"Along with the riding, she gave up every other form of exercise except dancing?"
"Exactly."
"Because she was not physically fit?"
"I've never heard her say so."
"Mr. Messenger, will you tell me a little about Nancy's mother?"
Messenger said, after a moment, gently, as though he were granting his forgiveness to an intruder: "Nancy's mother has been dead for ten years, Doctor Kildare."
"That made Nancy about ten years old at the time. What were her relations with her mother?"
"Deeply, deeply affectionate," said Messenger.
"No," said Kildare.
Messenger lifted his eyebrows and waited. Kildare explained:
"I don't think so. Affectionate, perhaps; but there must have been something else."
"Will you explain what you have in your mind?" asked Messenger.
"I have a thousand things in my mind," said Kildare. "I have to select something out of the thousand and try to concentrate on it. You'll help me, won't you?"
"You're upset," said Messenger.
"I'm badly upset," said Kildare.
He finished his drink and went over to the whisky bottle. There would be no hospital this day. He took that melancholy consolation to heart and then poured the third drink. He was beginning to taste the stuff now.
"Do you think that matters have come to a crisis?" asked Messenger. "Is that what you mean?"
"I think they have decidedly," said Kildare.
>
"If matters have come to a crisis," persisted Messenger, "it means that Nancy is on the verge of some very important action."
"Some very important action. Yes."
"Something that might remind us of the Chanler case?"
Kildare thought back to that dreary room in the boarding house and the body of Barbara Chanler with the sheet drawn up over the face. A shudder began in the small of his back. He took a quick drink.
Instead of answering the question, he said: "I don't want to discuss possibilities that may frighten you. I want to get information from you. Will you tell me a little about Nancy's mother?"
Messenger said: "She was a very gentle person: brave, calm, and beautiful. I thought she was a perfect woman. I still think so."
Kildare shook his head.
Messenger said coldly: "I assure you."
"Between a character like that and Nancy nothing could have happened. It must be that you're not telling me everything. Was there any circumstance connected with the death of your wife?"
Messenger frowned at the floor.
"I'm a doctor," said Kildare crisply. He thought of the pain that was in his own life and that would have to stay in it. He had to have the truth, even if it meant cutting with the knife. "I have to have the truth, and the full truth," he said.
