The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  Less than an hour ago, Louise had arrived here with her chauffeur. Her secretary and companion, Darlene Donovan, would come after the office details were cared for.

  Upon arriving, Louise had been overwhelmed by the beauty of the place—the lazy slapping of waters against the shore, the wide slope of lawn, the great rambling old house, the massive lines of its roofs and porches catching the white light of the summer moon.

  Brenda, the fat, good-humored, crinkly-eyed old cook, had given Louise a glad welcome and had led her straight through the spacious Hall, past the oaken staircases, to farther doors with the big colored squares of glass. There Louise had glimpsed an expanse of garden that stretched endlessly into the moonlit mists.

  “I’ll have to breathe in some of that garden magic before I can believe it’s real,” Louise had said.

  “Don’t you want a bite to eat first?” Brenda had suggested. “Don’t you want to meet Mr. White, the scientist that your aunt left in charge of things here? He’s up in his room, asleep over a book, most likely.”

  Louise had hesitated. She had been curious to know what this Mr. Theodore White would be like.

  “Is he young and handsome, Brenda?” Louise asked, smiling.

  “He’s a spring chicken compared to me. But I’m all of sixty-five, child. I guess he’s anyway fifty. His hair is just as white as his name, and so are his chin whiskers.”

  “I’ll go on to the garden,” Louise had said. “You have to take magic beauty like this when it comes. I’ll see Mr. White later.”

  “And all this mail—these letters from scientists all over the world—”

  “Later, Brenda.”

  And now Louise Wilmott found herself looking across a moonlit marble chess-table into the masked eyes of a tall young man—his voice, for all its depths, was certainly young—and he was talking in riddles.

  What a curious mixture his costume was—tattered old black silks and glittering precious stones. There were emeralds in his belt, rubies in his black gloves. As he talked he gestured expressively with his broad hands. Ragged strips of black silk fluttered from his wrists.

  He was hardly a scarecrow, Louise thought, but rather some hitherto unknown ghost that had sprung from the blackest waters of a moonlit lily pool. The conceit of a lazy bullfrog was in his low, easy voice.

  But presently his words struck Louise dumb with amazement.

  “Yes, I quite agree with you,” he was saying. “There’s nothing so peaceful as a moonlit garden. Do you know where to find a doctor?”

  “A doctor?”

  “One that can remove bullets,” said the man with the emerald mask. “One that can handle an emergency.”

  “I know of one at a village a hundred miles from here. We could get him yet tonight. My chauffeur is here.”

  “Tomorrow will be soon enough,” said the young man calmly. “I can depend on you?”

  “Of course, if he’s needed. But such things mustn’t wait. I’ll have the chauffeur go at once.”

  The masked man arose slowly. “Tomorrow.”

  Louise gasped. “But if someone has been shot—”

  “Please don’t excite yourself.”

  “Who was it? When did it happen?”

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” said the man, passing his gloved fingers lightly over his headband. “There’ll be several bullets. You’d better invite the doctor out for a week. Good evening.”

  He bowed deeply and strode off into the mists of the night.

  CHAPTER II

  Crash!

  Louise stood for a long time, completely puzzled over the strange encounter. She might have believed it only a fancy of her carefree mind, but at her fingertips were the smooth, cool surfaces of the marble: She could not deny that the chess-table was there.

  Neither could she deny that it had pink and white squared and a dark border, soft-tinted in the night’s steamy light. “Three colors of marble,” the emerald-crested phantom had said, “from three continents.”

  Louise sat down at the table and passed her fingers idly over the squares! The surface was smooth as a single sheet of glass. She wished for chessmen simply for the pleasure of using the table.

  It would be fun, she thought, to play chess by moonlight. Strange that the man in the mask should have heard of her weakness for this game. Was he not very clever to suggest a pastime so intriguing?

  Very clever, and perhaps very wicked. She wondered.

  She watched the funny shadows from her fingers, and tried to form the outlines of the players. She succeeded in making two bishops and a knight, but they refused to distribute themselves to separate squares.

  “I wonder where the chess-men are kept,” she said aloud.

  To her astonishment a drawer slid open silently from beneath the table’s surface.

  “I must have touched a button,” she said. “But where?”

  She tried pressing the ends and sides and undersides of the surfaces, hoping to discover the source of the seemingly magic action. However, no button was to be found.

  “How curious,” Louise murmured. “I’ve never believed in ghosts or witches or magic, but yet—what shall I find here?”

  From the drawer she lifted the scarf of black silk that had been laid neatly over the contents.

  “O-o-oh! What beautiful chess-men! They’re jeweled! And so intricately designed!”

  For a long moment Louise simply stared at them. They seemed too wonderful to be touched: She could not have been more fascinated by a chestful of gold and precious stones.

  She reached, then, to take a white king—reached slowly, hesitantly, not quite certain whether she ought

  Swish!

  The white king leaped into her fingers!

  As a small piece of steel might jump toward a passing magnet, so this little doll of carved ivory bounded from the drawer to her approaching hand. Louise held it up to the light, pressing it tightly. Another hidden button perhaps? An electric eye? An unseen, spring?

  Again Louise felt the chilling nerves of uncertainty and fright playing through her body. She looked at the great white mansion, half a mile away. It stood there, reassuring her, and beyond its shadowed walls was the wide lake, alive with moonlight. She was not dreaming; but this garden somehow contained the curious fancies of a dream come true.

  She reached for the white queen. It jumped into her hand. Then, as she started to place both pieces on the board, they hopped down to the correct squares.

  Castles, bishops, knights and pawns—black and white—they all cooperated. In a twinkling every piece was in its place. The knights, however, Louise had to pick up to examine more closely, for she had never seen any quite like them. Instead of being the usual horse heads, they were swordsmen, from head to toe perfect miniatures of ye knights of olde. What particularly attracted Louise’s attention was the flash of the swords. She fancied that the black knight had moved his weapon in a gesture of defiance. The blade had flashed light upward, toward a bough of silver maple that overhung the table, but. the movement had been so swift that she couldn’t be sure.

  Louise had only her own two eyes with which to verify all this surprising conduct. What she had seen thus far was disturbing, and she would have preferred to think it all a matter of mechanical tricks, together with certain deceiving effects of moonlight and shadow. Her chosen world was a world of scientific fact. In her capacity as the nation’s very popular “Miss Citizen” she had bent every effort to influence the nation’s lawmakers from a scientific point of view.

  She had, in fact, urged that the legislative minds in Washington would do well to throw personal grudges and personal ambitions to the winds and to give an intelligent ear to the voices of the world’s scientists. If she had consented to stay on for a fourth year in the honorary position of “Miss Citizen” she would have assembled a conclave of the world’s scientists in Washington to present a summary of what the mid-twentieth century world of science might offer for a world of better government.

&
nbsp; This plan she had carried so far as to extend a number of provisional invitations. And then, soon afterward, she had been forced to withdraw them. Out of consideration for her own personal welfare she had suddenly withdrawn from good-citizen activities.

  Such was her popularity that her influence would not end at once. The editorials all over the country had assured her of that. She had been called a girl genius, a political prodigy, a natural leader. All of which had made her smile with what the movie commentators had termed her characteristic modesty. She denied that she was in any sense a genius. She could not be termed a politician in the conventional sense, for she had no ambitions for a spectacular personal career.

  “My political philosophy is simply this,” she had said over and over. “We possess an abundance of sure knowledge. Let us apply what we know. Let our government always look to the facts that science has supplied. If these facts are consulted, a fair government will know what to do for the general good. If these facts are disregarded, it means that the government prefers to play favorites and serve selfish interests. In this age of science no lawmakers in th? world are justified in blundering along with the mistakes of yesterday. The roads have already been cut through the jungles of stupidity and ignorance. We have only to use them.”

  When Louise Wilmott said these words over the radio, everything was perfectly clear to her. The earth stood solid beneath her feet, and her eyes saw clearly the goals ahead.

  How far away all of that seemed tonight! She had left one universe and stepped into another, it seemed. This new universe was somewhat topsyturvy; it was shockingly disordered; it made her feel giddy, the way she had once felt after too many exciting rides at Coney Island. And somehow she welcomed it—it was all so gay and different.

  She began to play a game of chess.

  She moved the white king’s pawn, and ventured forth with her bishop. And to her great delight her black opponents moved themselves. Presently she found her king in check. She laughed aloud, and scooped the pieces toward the drawer. They leaped in and the drawer closed itself silently.

  “It must be hours past midnight,” Louise said, as she hurried back across the garden. “But I’ll come again tomorrow night. I wonder if he’ll be there again. I wonder

  Someone was coming out from the house to meet her: Brenda, the cook.

  “Child, what ever happened to you? I was worried to death. Are you all right?”

  “Of course, Brenda. Why?”

  “I never thought you’d go so far. It might be dangerous. Myself, I never go beyond that last row of rose bushes. Your auntie used to say it wasn’t safe for anyone but Teddy White and the gardeners to go straying around.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t be upsetting me with questions like that,” said Brenda, leading the way back to the house, “Do you think I’d sleep tonight if I started telling you tales about all the pets we’ve lost along that ravine at the north side of the gardens?”

  “Pets?”

  “Not to mention two or three gardeners. Yes, and a, three-year-old child.”

  “Brenda! When did any such things happen?”

  “There now. I’m not going to say a thing about it. Do you think I want to spoil your night’s sleep? I wouldn’t do that—though there’s precious few hours left to sleep. Now you come right into the kitchen with me and we’ll have that midnight snack—unless you’d rather I’d make it breakfast and be done with it.”

  “Brenda, you’ve got to tell me. Whose child was it? Did my aunt know? Did the officers come and search?”

  “Not another word, child. Here, take this glass of milk. I’ll have a sandwich ready in a jiffy. After your long ride I’m blessed if I can see how you could spend half the night mooning around in the garden. Now—”

  “Brenda, tell me about Theodore White.” Louise spoke out of the reverie that still hung over her. “I’m curious to see him. He must be tall and slender and broad-shouldered, and he speaks in a deep voice.”

  “H-m-m. Did you ever win a guessing contest?”

  “Am I right?”

  “You couldn’t be wronger. His voice is as deep as the chirp of a week-old chick that’s lost its mama. And tall? I doubt it he comes up to my chin.”

  “Oh,” Louise voiced her disappointment. “And he isn’t young?”

  “A spring chicken, as I said before. Around fifty. He’s a sweet boy, Teddy. A bit jumpy and full of nerves like a schoolboy. You should see how interested he was when, those letters started coming in for you with the names of all those scientific laboratories on the envelopes. It was all I could do to keep him from reading them.”

  “He probably knows some of them. I wonder what they wrote.”

  “Open ’em, child.”

  “Not till morning,” said Louise dreamily. “My head is too full of other things to think about science tonight.”

  “I’ll have a lot to tell you about how things are going when you want to listen. Teddy’s a sweet boy, as I say, but he’s no manager. He’s so deep in his private studies he doesn’t do a thing to keep the place up. The sensible thing would be to get rid of him. He hires garden workers and forgets to pay them. I declare we’d starve to death around here if I had to depend on him to balance the grocery budget. Just like a forgetful schoolboy. Sometimes I think I ought to take him across my knee and spank him. And then again I tell myself that when a boy gets to be fifty he’s too old to spank.”

  “We’ll discuss the matter later, Brenda,” Louise said, smiling. “Good night.”

  A sudden thumping of feet on the stairway caused Brenda to ejaculate, “Good heavens! The house must be falling in!”

  “Brenda! Brenda!” came a shrill voice from the stairs—a squeak that reminded Louise of a motherless chick.

  Brenda gathered up her skirts and thumped up two flights of stairs with remarkable spryness for a woman of sixty-five. Louise followed her, and by the time they reached the third floor they were both following Professor Theodore White.

  The professor was tiptoeing along the corridor in his flannel nightshirt. With his thin white hands he was shading his eyes from the wall lights as he tried to peer through the door of his study. He stopped and stroked his short white beard thoughtfully.

  “I’m positive I heard someone on the roof,” he said. “I’m positive, Brenda. I wanted you to corroborate my observation.”

  “Does that mean you want me to climb up and see?” said Brenda.

  “I think it must be spies,” said Theodore White. There was a frightened tremolo in his squeaky voice. He saw Louise, then, and gave an astonished gulp. “Where’d you come from?”

  “I’m Louise Wilmott. I’ve come to spend a few months—”

  “Were you up on the roof looking through my skylight? No, it couldn’t have been you, because it was a man.” The professor gave a laugh of confusion. “And you’re a girl.”

  Louise smiled. She observed that Teddy White had an amiable face and a high forehead, and he wore his spectacles well even when in his nightshirt.

  “A false alarm,” Brenda grumbled. “You’ve been dreaming things.”

  “I’m completely awake,” said Teddy White. “What I saw was no hallucination. I had simply tilted my head back, the better to contemplate certain matters pertaining to the square feet of surface over the face of the planet, when my gaze suddenly, came to a focus upon this gentleman—if an eavesdropper may be called a gentleman—you’ll permit me this liberty—”

  “Go on,” said Brenda.

  “He was leaning forward over the skylight, so that the forelock of his bushy hair marked the dust on the glass—and if you’ll look closely now as we go in you’ll see the arc he described as he swung out of sight.”

  “Did he wear a mask?”

  “Only the sly mask of an evil countenance. He must be a spy. He must have known that this is the week—” Theodore White’s voice lowered to a whisper—“this is the week that my most sensational theory goes down in black and white.”
/>   “What are we going to do?” Brenda asked.

  “If he’s up there with a gun,” said Louise, “we’re not safe at this open doorway. Is there another door we can enter?”

  “This way,” said Brenda.

  Louise followed them back through the corridor and into a dark storeroom. They moved a dusty piece of furniture and opened the door just wide enough to peek through. Louise caught a glimpse of a deskful of papers, surrounded by globes, maps and wall hangings full of mathematical formulae.

  Only the green desklight was burning, but it was sufficient to cast a dim glow across the skylight.

  The marauder was there, all right, a dark form against the night sky. He wore no mask, no gloves, no jewels. His face could not be seen clearly, but Louise noted that his head was wide at the cheek-bones. His thick eyebrows and heavy mustache might or might not be false.

  “He’s working with a glass-cutter,” Brenda whispered. “See?”

  “Doesn’t anyone have a gun?” Louise asked.

  Click. The small rectangle of glass was freed from the pane, to be lifted out by a handle of adhesive tape. Swiftly another bit of tape came sailing down through the aperture, suspended from a cord. The marauder passed his arm through and began to maneuver the cord, trying to catch one of the desk papers with the tape.

  “But you can’t have those!” Theodore White screamed and burst through the door like a barking terrier. He grabbed the paper that had started to sail upward.

  Then came the crash.

  Louise was not sure that the man overhead meant to fly through. Down he came with a great crash of glass.

  He came, wits and all.

  He landed on the desk first, bounded to the floor, whirled, scooped up an armful of papers, thrust them into the collar of his dark blue shirt.

  In the flurry of excitement Louise saw him strike at Teddy White; she saw him start in her direction, then shift toward the other door where Brenda had gone to block his way. He flung Brenda aside savagely and dashed out. His footsteps thudded down two flights of stairs and he was gone.