Cherry Ames Boxed Set 5-8

by Helen Wells

  Miss Pride might haye been some struggling, respectable seamstress. In fact, there was a sign “Sewing” in her window, and a sewing machine piled with materials. There was poverty in this house, too, with its threadbare carpets and shabby, scrupulously clean furniture. Miss Pride herself had a spinster’s neatness and primness. She ushered them into her parlor, took the faded cretonne cover off the bird cage so they could see her canary, and asked if they thought it wasn’t very warm today. It all seemed ordinary enough, drab and musty and pitiful. The whole house looked and smelled as if it had died. Little Miss Pride sat in the midst of her few belongings like a forlorn traveler coming from and going to nowhere.

  “What would you like to know?” she asked timidly. “No, I don’t read cards. I just—see.”

  “Well, what do you see?” Scott Owens challenged.

  Miss Pride folded her hands in her lap and gazed at them. Miss Owens scribbled a note to Cherry. Mr. Thatch told me she’s one of those rare people who are really psychic.

  The little seamstress said hesitantly, “You seem to have two lives. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. I see you in another life under another name. Two lives and—and two names, I think.”

  Miss Kitty stiffened but held her tongue.

  Scott grumbled, “Why don’t you fakers ever tell something about the future? Always the past, the past. Anyone can predict what already has happened.”

  Miss Pride drew a long, shaky breath. “All right, sir. You are facing an illness. I don’t like to tell people bad things. But if you insist—Well—You are facing some trouble, coming out of the past. That seems to be what brings on the illness. Excuse me, sir, but I do see it.”

  This was so possible in Scott’s condition, and so exactly what Gregory Carroll had predicted, that all three callers were shaken.

  Miss Pride said suddenly, “You had trouble about money, and an uncle.” Scott started, restrained himself.

  Now Miss Pride’s expression changed, so subtly that Cherry could not define her strained look.

  “About the two names. Haven’t you some papers of proof about that, somewhere?”

  Miss Kitty nodded her red head before Scott could stop her. Her brother glared at her.

  “Well, never mind, no matter,” Miss Pride said breathlessly. “About you, ma’am.” She turned her pinched face to Miss Kitty, and now the strain had gone out of it. “You’re going traveling. Just a short trip for now, and probably several short trips later. Business, it seems to be.” She talked on vaguely. Scott Owens cut her short.

  “You’re rambling. You’re not telling a thing.”

  The little seamstress colored. “I can tell the young lady here”—she looked at Cherry—“that she ought not to go out looking for trouble. If she does, she’ll find it. Bad trouble.”

  Cherry was amazed. It was true that she was tantalized to unravel the mystery clouding Scott Owens.

  Miss Pride said almost pleadingly, “Don’t interfere in anything that doesn’t concern you, young lady.”

  “Stuff and nonsense!” Scott exclaimed, getting to his feet. “What are you trying to keep her from learning or doing? What are you trying to find out from us?”

  In the crestfallen silence, the canary sang.

  Miss Pride defenselessly accepted what Scott chose to pay her, and took them to the door.

  “Good-bye. Please don’t be angry with me,” she whispered. “Be—be careful.” Then she added something very strange. “I can’t help myself. Good-bye.”

  She shut the door. Cherry thought she heard Miss Pride sobbing, on the other side of the closed door.

  CHAPTER V

  On Tour

  CHERRY NEVER BEFORE HAD BEEN BACKSTAGE. WHAT she saw there before, during, and after Scott Owens’s concert, impressed her as fantastic. It was, besides, a terrific ordeal for her patient.

  Around noon on the day of the concert—the concert was scheduled for evening—Scott began to “agonize,” as his sister called it. He paced their hotel sitting room, sat down and played fiercely on the rented piano, ranged the room once more, held his head, wrung his hands.

  “I’ll never get through this concert! Never! Never!”

  “You always get through them, Scott.”

  “But not this time! I haven’t whipped the Haydn into the shape I want—I’m not at all satisfied that the Shostakovitch is ready, I shouldn’t have programmed it until next winter—Oh, ye gods! I wish I were home in bed!”

  Cherry suffered right along with her patient. These hours of waiting for evening were nerve-racking. Facing several hundred critical people and performing for them, all alone, would be no joke, either.

  Scott Owens had a nosebleed. Cherry stanched it as fast as she could, with medicated cotton, ice, lemon juice to drink. “Nerves,” Miss Kitty said coolly. “He always has nosebleeds before a concert.”

  “But he’s anemic, he can’t afford to lose blood,” Cherry worried. “We’d better feed him all he will take.”

  The unhappy musician refused to eat. “I’ve lost my appetite, honestly I have,” he pleaded. Cherry could well believe him.

  “A little milk, then, Mr. Scott.”

  He drank it obediently, and immediately threw it up. “As usual,” Miss Kitty commented. Pacing the room, playing, lying down, rereading the music scores and marking them still again—the artist was in torture.

  “Look how my fingers are trembling,” he said and held them out before him. “I’ll make all kinds of mistakes!”

  “You’ll do what you always tell others to do,” his sister reassured him. “Press hard on the keys. That will stop the trembling. Pretend your ten fingers are ten hammers. Don’t worry, Scott, press hard and your firm touch will return.”

  Cherry marveled at Miss Owens’s calm. But later in the afternoon, she found the sister lying down in her own hotel room, with a wet towel over her eyes.

  “Can you give me anything for a raging headache? Lord, no, Cherry, I’m not cool and collected! I’m nearly as upset as Scott is, but I don’t dare let him see it! Do you know what depends on a single concert? His whole career! This tests his whole lifework! One bad concert and the critics pounce. Slipping, they’ll say. Then Scott would feel so hurt that he’d really slip. Oh, pray, Cherry, pray. Scott has a very difficult program tonight.”

  “He won’t let me give him any sedatives or even any simple treatments,” Cherry murmured, as she tended Miss Kitty. “Tell me. Does Mr. Scott ever get a heart attack before or after a concert?”

  “No, thank heavens, that’s never happened yet.”

  Cherry sighed in relief. She knew that the typical attack of this cardiac condition started with a pain in the left shoulder, spread down the arm to the elbow, into the wrist, and even to the fingers. Mr. Scott could not play if agonizing pain struck his shoulder and arm and hand. Worse, any handicap, even temporary, to the musician’s priceless arms and hands could throw him into panic. From panic and worry into attack, a vicious circle—

  “You see, Cherry, all this torment that Scott is going through isn’t so bad for him, at that. It’s perfectly natural; almost all musicians and many actors suffer like this before important performances. Scott sweats all the stage fright out of his system ahead of time. Then when he faces the audience, he’s calm—still scared to death but reasonably calm. You’ll see.”

  Miss Kitty was right. By evening, the artist was worn out but in quiet control of himself. Cherry was concerned that he looked so exhausted. “He’ll get his second wind,” his sister promised. “The minute he starts playing, he’ll be fine.”

  The three of them drove to the concert hall three quarters of an hour before curtain time. They were all resplendent in summer evening dress. Managers, stagehands, a piano tuner, all appeared, wanting to speak to Scott. Miss Owens shooed them away from her brother.

  “I’ll see to the placing of the piano and the lights myself,” she said. “He’s already tried out the piano, thank you, and it’s satisfactory.” She went off
with the backstage crew.

  The musician and Cherry retired to the Green Room “—where the performers turn green with stage fright,” Scott Owens joked. It was a perfectly quiet sitting room, dimly lighted. The artist put aside his scores, sat down, and closed his eyes. Cherry did not even stir. He seemed to be thinking, relaxing, summoning up his powers for the concentrated effort soon to come.

  After a while, with Cherry, he left the Green Room and they peered out from the wings at the arriving audience. The house twinkled with hundreds of lights and was filled to the rafters. A smiling face, a sharp yellow dress, a man’s white hair, someone’s glinting jewel, sprang out at them from the moving sea of faces. Scott was elated. Still, his hands were ice cold and he was sweating. Cherry held tight to the stimulants she carried in her silk purse for him.

  The magic moment arrived. The house lights dimmed. The audience quieted to a murmur. The manager brought chairs for Miss Kitty and Cherry to sit in the wings. Scott, Miss Kitty, Cherry stood looking out at the empty, brilliantly illumined stage. The gleaming dark piano stood open. The ivory keys shone.

  “Luck, Scott!” His sister kissed him. She wiped his hands with her handkerchief. He patted her on the shoulder. Cherry’s black eyes glowed good wishes at him.

  He strode out alone and crossed the empty stage. He looked very tall and remote out there in the spotlight. Cherry with Miss Kitty heard the wave of applause, saw Scott bow, then the rustling silence. Scott sat down before the piano with his back to the wings and meditated a second before the keys. There was an expectant hush. Then the first firm notes pealed out.

  He played magnificently—purer than Cherry had heard him on the radio, a shade less profound than when he played in the solitude of his upstairs study. But it was a superb, a bravura performance. The applause between numbers was thunderous. At intermission, Scott came staggering back in a triumphant daze and bolted into the Green Room. Cherry brought him a glass of water. Miss Kitty stood guard inside the door.

  “How is it?” he asked his sister anxiously.

  “You were never better. Just don’t look at their faces. When you bow, look at the back wall. Don’t forget to look up, though, at the balcony and boxes.”

  “Yes, Kit,” he said like a little boy. “How are the acoustics?”

  They did not talk much. Cherry said nothing at all. She made a close visual check and was satisfied that the musician felt well. Indeed, the performance, so long dreaded and prepared for, seemed to release and relax him. He went back on stage to play the second half of his program.

  In this half were the more difficult numbers, including one of Bébé’s which this audience had never heard before and might not like, at least not at first hearing. Scott Owens was nervous for his own and his friend’s sake. Cherry admired his courage, for audiences can hiss and boo. She admired his generosity, too, in giving a fellow musician’s composition a launching and the prestige of his own performance.

  When Scott returned to the wings, the program completed, the audience roaring applause and bravos, Cherry’s patient was exhausted. He was drenched with perspiration. Still the audience clamored.

  “Encore! Encore!” They left their seats and surged down the aisles and packed themselves around the stage. “Owens! Bravo! Encore!”

  Scott went out to the close-packed ring of faces at his feet. Silence fell. Cherry heard him say, “Thank you. An encore.”

  Someone called out, “Play your own étude, Opus 1!”

  Scott modestly shook his head at them, and sat down and played a brief Chopin waltz, the one he had played for Cherry. One, two, three short encores he played. Still his audience would not let him go, crying and applauding for more.

  “Scott!” Miss Kitty hissed from the wings. “Come back here!”

  He bowed apologetically to the upturned faces at the footlights and came back to his sister and Cherry in the wings.

  “That’s enough!” Miss Kitty whispered. “Don’t make them sick of you. Always leave them wanting more.”

  Now the frail man really seemed exhausted and Cherry began to worry in earnest. His face was drained of color, his whole slight body sagged, his hands, veined with exertion, curled now like withered leaves. But the manager was summoning them, many voices and footsteps echoed behind them.

  Scott said wearily, “There’s still the reception to be got through. I’m so tired.”

  For an hour longer, he stood backstage, with his fiercely protective sister beside him, while admirers shook his hand and chatted. Each person jealously tried to chat with the celebrated pianist a little longer than his neighbor chatted. Scott looked ready to drop but smiled and smiled, and said something appropriate to each one.

  “He’s got to go home now,” Cherry frowned at Miss Kitty.

  They got him out of the crowd and back to the hotel. He refused to go to bed. He had to wait just a little longer, he pleaded, for the one A.M. editions of tomorrow’s newspapers. These would carry reviews of his concert.

  The notices were excellent. Scott ate, smiled, and slept. Miss Kitty had “a good cry.” Cherry put her stimulants back in the kit. It was all over.

  But Cherry had spotted a symptom this evening which gravely disturbed her. It was the way the musician’s left shoulder and arm had hung after the concert, as if in pain. If he had suffered pain, he was too dazed by that time, too exhausted and numbed, to pay attention to it. That arm was a danger signal. A signal to Cherry’s trained eyes of impending heart attack.

  It was two-thirty in the morning when Cherry secretly slipped downstairs to the hotel lobby. From a phone booth she telephoned Dr. Pratt long-distance.

  The doctor’s voice came distantly. “I don’t believe the concert did this to him. Playing and concerts agree with him. What else has happened? What was there to worry him?”

  “Fortunetellers—?”

  “What nonsense is this?” asked the doctor after a pause.

  “Nothing, really,” Cherry replied quickly. “I’m sure he will be all right in the morning.”

  Yes, the concert was all over. Now, next day, it was all to do over again, in the next town. They packed and prepared to board another train.

  At the railroad station, there were no drawing rooms to be had on their train. Miss Kitty was annoyed. She rushed around from ticket windows to passenger agent’s office, hat bobbing militantly atop her reddish hair.

  “Never mind,” the pianist told her cheerfully. “I feel so well today that I don’t need to be wrapped in cotton wool and hidden in any drawing room. Ah, with that concert behind me, I feel wonderful!”

  Cherry grinned at her patient. “More fun anyway to sit in the regular car and see all the other passengers, isn’t it?”

  So they settled down in Pullman seats and Scott proceeded to amuse, amaze, and startle the passengers all around them by banging away at his silent keyboard.

  Presently the three of them fell to talking about fortunetellers. Cherry noticed that the man across the aisle seemed to prick up his ears. But people bored by long trips often idly listen in on neighbors’ conversation, and besides the man went on reading his magazine.

  “I’ll tell you what I think about these so-called fortune-tellers,” Scott said. He was bright and lively today. “No, Kit, I’m not angry any more. But I’ve sworn off them, and I wish you would too.”

  “They’ve told us a lot of things,” his sister bridled.

  “Only things in the past.”

  “But accurate, even on family secrets.”

  “Want to know how they do it?” Scott asked derisively. “They haven’t any second sight. They get their information from you—from you yourself—by adroit questioning, by playing on your emotions, by scaring and worrying you and then suddenly asking you a question. You blurt out the information they want. Then they hand your own information back to you as ‘second sight.’”

  Cherry nodded. It was true.

  “But they have told me more things than I’ve foolishly revealed,” Miss Kitt
y insisted.

  Cherry suggested, “Maybe they dig up information about people in advance. You know, through newspapers or gossip or pumping your friends. That’s easy to do. Then when you come in to see them, they can astound you by knowing all sorts of things about you.”

  “Certainly,” Scott seconded her. “That’s obviously the reason why your fancy and expensive Mr. Gregory Carroll insists that his ‘clients’ make appointments one and two weeks in advance. Gives him and the scholarly Mr. Thatch time to investigate you.”

  Miss Kitty sniffed. “We walked in on Miss Pride and that witch without advance appointments—without any warning at all—and they told us exactly the same things that Gregory Carroll told us!”

  The three of them mused over this. Miss Owens argued that being told the identical things by three such various fortune–tellers “proved” the “truth” of fortune-telling.

  “I don’t believe it,” the musician said stubbornly. “I can’t think of a good explanation to refute you, Kit, but I don’t believe it.”

  They went in to lunch in the diner, still arguing. The man with the magazine happened to be seated with them, since there were tables for two or for four. He did not join in their conversation, however. Later they saw him when they went to the observation car, and again back in their own Pullman. Once, when he jostled her as the train sped around a bend, Cherry was vaguely aware that she was growing tired of running into this man.

  It was not until the final stop of the train ride, when the porter was carrying their bags out to the vestibule, and everyone was putting on hats and jackets, that Cherry took a good look at him. He was ordinary in appearance, with an underling’s bearing, of medium height and build but very strong, thoroughly inconspicuous. The only distinguishing mark about him was that his left shoulder was a little higher than his right one.

  CHAPTER VI

  Reunion

  THIS WEEK END WAS THE ONE CHERRY HAD BEEN WAITING for. The concert tour was successfully completed, and the musician had returned home to rest. Dr. Pratt, long before, had promised Cherry she might have this long week end off.