This time Hartlein’s effect was genuine. Georgine, who had been strangling yawns over a desultory piece of sewing, raised her head in startled interest. She looked at her husband, who had not moved or raised his eyelids, and yet seemed to have shot up an invisible antenna of attention.
“She has seen to it before,” the younger man repeated. His hollow cheeks appeared to have drawn in farther; he kept his head rigid, darting significant glances from one to another of his auditors with intensely flashing eyeballs. “She kept watch over the Colony—the mantle of old Nikko fell straight onto her shoulders—and pretended to care for their welfare. Actually, she was on the alert for any signs of faithlessness. There were a few backsliders. They died, or disappeared, and no one ever questioned the fact. If any Beyond-Truther had noticed the coincidence—it wouldn’t have been Chloe Majendie that caused it, but the Hand of God.”
“You mean they let God into this religion?” Todd inquired.
“Certainly. A Beyond-Truther, if he chooses, may also be a member of an established church.”
Where all else had failed, this actually roused Mr. McKinnon. His eyelids flew up. “He may what?”
Hartlein nodded impatiently, and opened his mouth to continue. “Well, I’m damned,” Todd forestalled him with a flow of speech. “That’s a new one. Another established church? How d’you suppose they reconciled—and yet, come to think of it, there aren’t many churches that would object to continence, or charity or temperance. Nor yet to an occasional day of fasting, for that matter. But how did they treat the business of leaving money to your church?”
“They were above it,” said Hartlein briefly.
“Did the Beyond-Truthers have to live in poverty too?”
“No, no indeed. Most of them have done very well, and there’s no rule against their making as much money as possible.” For the first time a gleam of humor appeared on the cadaverous young face, giving it the attraction of irony if not of gaiety. “The richer they are, the better things vibrate in that next sphere; you can figure it, the disciples’ minds are free from mundane worries.”
“Now you begin to make it sound attractive.”
Hartlein regained the thread of his story. “There’s no question of leaving money to the cult, it’s not required. Some of the Beyond-Truthers do, of course, for lack of anything else to do with it. As a matter of fact, very few of them do belong to other churches, they’re after something screwier, and they’ve got it and are satisfied. None of them, obviously, has considered the danger. And there is danger, the worse because it hasn’t been expressed in the rules. That Hand of God is only implied, but so far as they know it’s always hovering.
“And,” he added with a sudden odd break in his voice, “I’m cursed if I know how she’s managed it. She had only to make sure that one of the disciples was disobeying, and then—it looked so natural—”
“You’re implying that this is sort of a ritual murder?” Todd inquired.
“Yes. That’s it.”
“But then, surely, the deaths should all have some unusual feature in common; there should be a ritual tinge about the method.”
“There isn’t,” said Hartlein stubbornly, “except for the Hand of God touch. One dies in childbirth, one of pneumonia, one in an automobile accident—”
“I see. Well—” Todd’s voice was brisk, “I’m afraid this is nothing I can use, Hartlein; I’m sorry.”
For almost a minute no one spoke. The last embers of the fire collapsed with a soft ticking sound; a gust of wind thrashed the bare fronds of the willow beside the house, and then died down, so that in the silence the rasp of a match seemed very loud as Georgine lit a cigarette. Hartlein looked stupefied for a moment, and then visibly marshaled his forces.
“You think it isn’t interesting?”
“The background is, in a mild way, but it’s no good for my purposes. On the strength of two or three natural-seeming deaths, over a period of twenty-five years, I can’t work up much of a mystery.”
“Two or three—” Hartlein gulped, and coughed. “If you began to look into it, the list would be staggering. I could give you names, you could ask—ask what became of Hildegarde Latham, and Stella Dubois, and Sibyl Grant, and Harriet Withers, and Frances Sagers, and Grace Vane, and—and—”
“Yes, I see you’ve given it a remarkable amount of study.” Todd’s face was at its most wooden. “It scarcely seems worth it, if I may say so.”
“It would, if you knew how it had touched me. You think these deaths are all in the remote past? They’re not; one of them occurred only last year. It was one of her own nieces, old Chloe’s; the girl married an outsider, and everyone knew she meant to make it a normal marriage, and—she and the man both went over a cliff two hours after they’d driven off for their wedding trip. And her sisters—” Hartlein hesitated, and looked sullenly from Todd to Georgine. “Her sisters are living under the fear that the same thing will happen to them.” He waited a moment, and seemed to detect a flicker of incredulity in Todd’s eye. “I ought to know,” he blurted out. “I married one of them!”
“That’s the lady in Grass Valley?” Todd inquired.
“In what? Grass Val—no, no, that’s not—” Hartlein thrust confusion away with a gesture. “Never mind that. This girl actually flew up to Reno with me; and then, after we were married and I started talking about the plans for our life together, things I’d taken for granted as any normal man would, she—she changed.” An old bewilderment was in his voice and eyes. “All at once, in five minutes, she was terrified; it had all been a mistake, she’d never live with me, she would get an annulment. And why, if she wasn’t afraid of that old woman? That Majendie witch—she seems never to lift a finger, she just sits there; maybe she goes into a trance, and calls down some vengeance from God, and then waits; but however she does it, she’s evil. There’s—there’s another niece, too.” He licked his lips. “She hasn’t disobeyed openly yet, but the old woman may be able to read her mind, because she’s given a warning—a warning in poison.”
He stopped, drew in a hoarse breath, and had recourse to his handkerchief in an absurd anticlimax. More quietly he said, “And the spell’s so strong that the victim won’t believe it herself. No one sees it.”
“What do the police think?” Todd inquired wearily.
A dull flush stained Hartlein’s forehead, under the hanging lock of hair. He hesitated again. “Can you imagine?” he demanded at last with a faint sneer. “ ‘Give us chapter and verse, two witnesses, proof of intent and proof of method—’ then they say there’s nothing in it, and brush you off as a crank.”
“Has anyone actually consulted them?”
“No,” said Hartlein sulkily. He gave Todd a resentful look, compressing his lips almost into a pout; then suddenly he got to his feet. “Never mind, I get it. I’ve wasted an evening. I’ll be going now. Don’t bother to let me out.”
He snatched scarf and overcoat together over his chest, made for the front door and wrenched it open. It closed behind him with a crash; his very footsteps sounded angry, running down the porch steps and diminishing along the stone walk that led to the street.
The McKinnons looked at each other. “He wasted an evening!” said Georgine, when she could speak.
“That did seem a bit gratuitous, considering everything else.” Todd, putting up the fire screen, gave a mirthless chuckle. “The man thought I looked like a fool, I’ve no doubt. He spent enough time outside the window, sizing us up.”
“Oh, dear. Was he out there for a while before he rang?”
“I think so. There were two sneezes, some minutes apart. Maybe he wouldn’t have rung if he hadn’t given himself away with that second one, but then once he was in he had to deliver that nonsense.”
“You think it was all nonsense? Do put out the lights and come on, Todd dear, you must be exhausted.”
Todd paused by the switch near the staircase, and ran a hand over his smooth sandy hair. “I am, and puzzled too. Wha
t d’you suppose that was about, Georgine? There were some of the most palpable lies I’ve ever heard; the wife in Grass Valley, and that list—Hildegarde Withers and Grace Latham, good Lord! Too bad he didn’t kill off Sherlock Brown and Father Holmes too.”
They began to mount the stairs slowly. Georgine said, “Who were the other ladies on the list?”
“Characters out of soap operas, like as not. But why the devil was he so insistent on telling that story? The queer part of it is that though the whole story may have been nonsense, he believed some of it. The part about the old woman, for instance: he didn’t invent the hatred he feels for her.”
Georgine paused in her hasty preparations for bed. “Do you think you could use any of this?”
“Well—I’m a li’le curious about Mrs. Chloe Majendie, but that won’t get me far.”
A few minutes later his wife’s voice came out of the darkness. “Todd, are you asleep? I just thought of something. If that man knew Ricky Devlin, and came to you because of it, he must have heard something about the business at Grettry Road. He must have known that you and I handed over evidence to the police.”
“Yes,” said Todd slowly, “that’s possible. He comes here and loads that story—which no policeman would touch—onto me, in the hope that I’ll start writing it up and find something that would interest the Law.” He turned uneasily in bed. “You know, Hartlein must have felt fairly sure of himself. He was careful to leave us his address on that envelope.”
“He wants to use you and then take a commission? That self-centered young squirt,” said Georgine indignantly. “I hope you’re not going to have any part of it.”
She was caught unawares by a wave of sleep; but her indignation was not forgotten overnight. It became more pronounced the next morning when Todd came down with the young squirt’s cold.
CHAPTER TWO
TODD MCKINNON WAS not the worst patient in the world. During his infrequent illnesses he was usually content with a radio, paper and pencil to work with if the mood struck him, and an occasional tray of food. This time, however, he was running a slight fever, and Georgine found his attitude almost more than she could bear. He was restless, he was morose, and he spoke frequently of the obscurity of the path ahead of him, all this combining to make her snap at him with increasing violence as two or three days went by.
The financial worries were real enough, but they took second place beside Todd’s mental state. He was in that dread condition of the professional writer, a time in which no plot goes right, no word is apt, and the very will to work sinks lower each day from lack of stimulus. It was getting him down, and there was nothing that Georgine could do to help. If she took a job herself it might relieve the money pressure, but Todd would be left just where he was before—maybe worse off.
The impasse troubled her constantly, as she hurriedly pushed the vacuum cleaner around the living-room of a morning, or harvested the eternal crop of housekeepers’ moss from under the beds. It was a pity that ideas didn’t present themselves as freely as dust or dirty dishes. If only she could do something—short of committing a murder herself, for Todd to use as material—
She was ripe for the plucking, she admitted to herself, when on the third day of Todd’s cold he asked for the telephone book and looked up a name in the M section. There was really a Mrs. Nicholas Majendie, living on one of the winding hill streets not more than a mile away.
“I could go up there tomorrow, for a look at her,” Todd mused aloud.
“Tomorrow? With that cough? Not a chance, chum,” said Georgine firmly. “You stay home and take your nice red vitamin capsules.”
“Oh, I’m taking the damn things. I wish they worked on the brain.”
Georgine saw the frustrated look that drew his brows together, so that the deep-set eyes retreated almost to invisibility. She said doubtfully, “Would it help any if I went?”
He turned his head, considering, and put out a hand to rest lightly on hers. “If you’d be willing, Georgine—”
She nodded, and watched his face relax. —I’m caught, she said to herself. I can’t get out of it now; but why should I want so much to be let off?—
Her heart sank still farther on the next day when, early in the afternoon, she had to put on her wraps and back their ancient car out of the garage, and start. “Todd,” she said, coming to stand beside his chair in the living-room, “there’s one thing I’m going to do, no matter if you do laugh. I’m taking along some of my old identification cards, the ones I had before we were married. I’ll have to introduce myself somehow, but those people might just as well think I’m Mrs. James Wyeth.”
Todd didn’t laugh. He looked up at her and said in his most casual tone, “Dear Georgine, consider the four years I’ve spent digging up old cases and following new ones, and never a minute’s danger in any of ’em.”
“All right,” said Georgine, “but you’ll look pretty silly when the Hand of God gets me.” She laughed cheerfully and got out before her nerve failed her.
***
Cuckoo Canyon might at one time have harbored ladies in batik draperies and gentlemen in sandals, and nude children of both sexes. In this year it looked like any other newish street in Berkeley, sparsely built up with middle-class homes and well-kept gardens, and shaded with the omnipresent eucalyptus. It was a narrow street, and Georgine left her car around the corner at its foot, and began to walk up past the redwood cottages and the equally modest gray or white stucco ones. She came to the end of the settled portion, and still saw nothing that resembled a “rich house on a cliff” where a malevolent old lady might sit spider-like; but the road went on, and she climbed with it, listening to the clacking talk of quail in the underbrush, and smelling the new grass that had sprung up at the roadside after the first fall rains. “Maybe,” she told herself half-aloud, “there’s no such house after all; or maybe she’s out, or they won’t let me in.”
The road swerved to the left, but on her right a graveled footpath continued upward. At the junction a one-car garage stood, its doors open so that a sleek convertible was visible within, and beside the garage a ramshackle car was parked in the grass. At some distance behind the garage was a small wooden house, painted a silvery gray with scarlet doors, and covered by a magnificent trumpet vine; and beside the footpath ran a low hedge with a gate in it.
Georgine, pausing for breath, looked over the gate as the sound of voices reached her, coming from the open door of the house. She was too far away to distinguish words, but the tenor of the sound was unmistakably quarrelsome. It rose to a shout; at once a dark-haired girl leaped out of the door, slammed it behind her, and came running down the path.
From under the drooping branches of a huge olive tree close to the gate, another voice spoke: a cool, languidly amused one.
“So soon?” it said. “He’s only been here fifteen minutes.”
The running girl saw Georgine, and slackened speed. “We have other company,” she said, and added rapidly over her shoulder as she approached, “Yes, he started in right away. Lucky it isn’t raining and I can get out of the house before he hits me!” She spoke to Georgine. “Were you looking for someone?”
She was a good-looking girl, her eyes large and gray under fine eyebrows, her dark hair drawn up into a little crown of curls on top of her head. She stood breathing fast and smiling widely and pleasantly, her hands in the pockets of a dull-blue wool dress with a round white collar.
“Yes, I am,” Georgine said. “Is there a Mrs. Majendie who lives somewhere around here?”
“Right up the hill. The house is on this same road, around two or three long curves. You’ll think you’re never going to get there, but you will.”
“Thank you.” Georgine prepared to go on, but the girl stopped her. “It’s really a lot quicker,” she began, and paused. “You didn’t want to—I don’t suppose you’re trying to—as a matter of fact, she never buys anything from—”
“I’m not selling anything. You don’t happen to
know if she objects to giving interviews?”
“We do happen to know,” said the blue girl, considering, “she’s our aunt, you see. You might have a try; and if you go up, it’s twice as quick by this path, and hardly any steeper.”
“You’re awfully kind.”
“Not at all.” The girl turned her head and called, “Ryn! Do you know if Chloe’s at home?”
The person who had been hidden by the olive leaves leaned forward, evidently from a reclining position in a deck chair. “She’s home,” said the cool, slow voice, “and the Godfrey, too. They both went up from the greenhouse a few minutes ago.” She was addressing Georgine directly, now, saying something about finding them in the garden; her face was framed in gray-green foliage, and Georgine lost the rest of the sentence in her sudden admiration.
These two young women were sisters beyond doubt. Their coloring was almost the same, their heads were shaped alike and they had the same attractive mouth and chin; but the candid good looks of the girl in blue faded to nothing beside the real beauty of this one. There was not a jarring note in it, from the gloss on the shoulder-length black hair to the shape of the eyes that almost matched the color of the olive tree’s leaves. There was a transparent pallor, a stillness and delicacy about Ryn’s face, that reminded one almost irresistibly of the Queen Nefertiti; but she could smile, too, slowly and with closed lips. —Dear me, Georgine thought, that girl’s a Helen of Troy. Maybe it’s just as well I came instead of Todd!—
The Smiling Tiger Page 2
