Jack and Susan in 1913

by Michael McDowell

  When Jack left the hospital, he was wearing an old suit of clothes donated by a church charity. His own clothing had been too badly burned by the fire to be wearable, and there was no one to bring him clothes from the Fenwick. His pockets were empty, for all his money had been spent on sending messages. So, despite his impatience to get back to the Fenwick and find out what was going on with his reconciliation plans, he was forced to walk home. He looked like a drunkard dressed in a suit of mission clothes, searching out a bar that would provide him with drink on credit. He even took the precaution of avoiding policemen, who might have collared him for being in the wrong part of town. So using side streets and a corner of the park, Jack made his way back to the Fenwick.

  He discovered that he’d lost the key to his room, but that presented no problem, since the door was standing wide open. Odd, Jack thought, but he’d worry about that later.

  Hurriedly he changed clothes, putting on his only decent suit. There was no point now in looking like a beggar when he presented himself to Susan. Hastily he finished getting ready, and then stepped outside into the hallway.

  The next two minutes determines my fate, he thought.

  He knocked first on Hosmer’s door, but there was no answer.

  He went up the stairs and knocked on Susan’s door. No answer there either. There wasn’t even the familiar commotion of Tripod hurling himself against the door.

  “Susan! Susan!” he called.

  The door behind him in the passageway scraped open. Mrs. Jadd stuck out her head.

  “She’s gone. And good riddance.”

  “Gone where?” Jack demanded.

  “Wherever that other one has gone.”

  “What other one?”

  “Mr. Collamore. They run off together. Elopements,” Mrs. Jadd intoned judgmentally, “are wicked things.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “WHERE DID THEY go?” cried Jack in an agony of desperation.

  “Don’t know,” said Mrs. Jadd, with evident pleasure. She shushed her twins, who had been whining and peering around her skirts into the hallway, and pushed them back inside the apartment.

  “When did they go?”

  “Let’s see,” she said thoughtfully, “wasn’t today, wasn’t yesterday. They left the day before that.”

  “And you don’t have any idea—”

  “Always knew there was something going on between those two. A respectable apartment building is no place to carry on a romance, not when there is children around to be infected. It’s a wicked city, Mr. Beaumont, and Susan Bright was a shining example of it.”

  Jack didn’t stay to argue Susan’s moral posture with Mrs. Jadd. He immediately paid a visit to the landlady, Mrs. McCalken, who lived two blocks away. Mrs. McCalken knew only that both Susan Bright and Hosmer Collamore were paid up in their rent. They’d left no forwarding address, though she’d specifically asked them to do so.

  “And it was your impression that the two of them left together?”

  “Keeping company, as my ma used to say,” said Mrs. McCalken, wagging a square head on a fat neck. “Keeping company, Mr. Beaumont.”

  Jack wandered dazedly back out into the street. The bandages around his chest felt as if they were about to choke him they were so tight. His great fear those days in the hospital had been that Susan would never forgive him for his deception, though he’d allowed himself to think that with time and perseverance he could eventually convince her. She loved him; she’d even agreed to marry him—under his real name, just let her remember that!—and now she had thrown it all over just because he was rich when he had told her he was poor? It didn’t make any sense!

  Well, actually he wasn’t really rich—yet. He had only a comfortable income from his job with the family firm. But he would be decidedly rich when his uncle died and left him not only the business but the substantial private holdings that had been amassed through three generations of Beaumonts in Manhattan and upstate New York. His uncle could have no objection to Susan, for Miss Bright was very much a lady in appearance, manner, dress, and carriage. Also, Jack had done a little investigating, and discovered that her stock was quite good; she was from one of the best families of western Connecticut. There would be little difficulty in suppressing, for a few years at least, information about Susan’s brief and inconclusive theatrical career. Jack’s uncle need never know about that.

  But those, it appeared now, had been the idlest of idle dreams, for Susan had done what Jack had never imagined. She’d run off with Hosmer Collamore. Hosmer! Jack and Susan had laughed at Hosmer together, at his attempts, never wholly successful, of purging his accent of its Brooklyn origins. They’d poked fun at his peacock pride, his pomaded mustache, and his maladroit adoration of Ida Conquest. Jack had to admit, however, that he’d proved a good friend, assisting Jack with the promotion of his camera invention, in suggesting an attorney to secure the patent rights, in being occasionally a good companion. Nevertheless, that Susan should run off with this man was well nigh inconceivable to Jack. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced there was a piece of the puzzle that was still hidden from him.

  He intended to find out what it was.

  His first move was to taxi down to 27 West Twenty-seventh Street.

  There was no longer any sign on the building indicating the premises of the Cosmic Film Company. Jack looked up at the facade. Windows on the third and fourth floors were broken, the sashes charred and black. He went into the cramped little lobby and tried to call down the elevator. It wasn’t working, and he supposed it must have been damaged in the fire the previous week. He climbed the stairs.

  A rope blocked the third floor, and Jack breathed through his mouth to avoid the stench of charred wet wood. Peering into the room that had housed the film laboratory, he saw that it was deserted. Tables and other furniture damaged in the fire had been abandoned. No one had cleaned up, no one had made repairs. A cricket chirped in a pile of dense rubble in the corner. Otherwise all was silent.

  The fire had burned the stairway above the third floor, and it was impossible for Jack to go higher in the building, but because the elevator was not working, Jack realized that the other two floors of the film company must also be deserted. So where were Junius Fane, Ida Conquest, and the thirty or so other employees of the Cosmic Film Company? Had they all been given time off while repairs were made to the premises?

  But no repairs were being made.

  Perhaps they had moved to another location?

  Jack went down one flight, and knocked at the door of the dress manufactory on the second floor. A girl in a long blue skirt inched the door open. “Yes please?”

  “I’m looking for the Cosmic Film Company.”

  “They piked it,” said the young woman mysteriously.

  “The whole company?”

  “Every bit.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t nobody know. Used to have us make their costumes and didn’t pay on time though they was right in the rooms above, and that’s cheek if you ask me what I think about it. Always getting broke into, and now this fire, and look—” She pulled open the door another inch or two, and Jack peered inside. At the front of the loft, the ceiling had collapsed in a wet mire of plaster and pipes and burned wood.

  “Lost eighteen bolts of silk,” the girl continued. “You ever buy silk by the bolt, mister? You got any idea what that costs? It costs dear, is what it costs, and that silk is gone. So’s Cosmic, and I ain’t a bit sorry.”

  With that she shut the door with finality.

  Jack was not getting very far with his investigation. The burns sustained in the fire, as well as several days of physical inactivity and mental anguish, had debilitated his system. He was exhausted, and took a cab back home. He intended to lie down for an hour or two and think about what to do next.

  That small respite was not allowed him, however. As he climbed the stairs toward his apartment, there on the third-floor lan
ding stood a figure. It was late in the day, and the light was never too bright in the hallways of the Fenwick anyway, so Jack did not immediately recognize his visitor.

  “Mr. Beaumont?” the man said, and the voice was familiar.

  “Mr. Garden!”

  Mr. Garden was the junior partner—though he was nearly sixty years old—of the law firm which handled the private affairs of Jack’s uncle. Jack made a quick and simple deduction: Nobody in his “real life” was supposed to know that he was anywhere near West Sixtieth Street; they were supposed to think he would be in Havana for a few months. But now here stood Mr. Garden, and if Mr. Garden knew of his whereabouts, then very likely Jack’s uncle knew as well.

  It was a deduction that did not bode well for Jack, and he suddenly felt even wearier than he had in the taxi coming home. Well, there was nothing to be done but ask the man inside.

  Mr. Garden looked about Jack’s sitting room with an expressionless curiosity that did nothing to put Jack at ease.

  “We understand that you were in hospital,” Mr. Garden began after a moment. He was a thin, aristocratic man with a bright red face, and shining white hair. Jack had always thought that Mr. Garden resembled a beet in a snowstorm.

  “I’m out now,” Jack offered lamely. He always felt like a little boy in the lawyer’s presence.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Garden. “We hope you are recovered.”

  Mr. Garden frequently used we in an ambiguous, somewhat regal sense. In this case, did it include his uncle? Jack thought it better not to ask.

  “I have to recuperate for a while.”

  Mr. Garden didn’t reply to this, instead he simply gazed out the window for a few moments, and then he looked at the calendar on the wall. Then, as if the calendar had reminded him of the subject of time in general, he announced: “You have lived here for three months, two weeks and one day.”

  “Something like that,” said Jack uncomfortably. This visit was just the sort of thing to cap an already trying day.

  “You still maintain your bachelor apartments on Twenty-third Street, however?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Jack, with the uneasy feeling that this truthful answer was somehow going to get him into trouble.

  “Isn’t that—extravagant?” asked Mr. Garden.

  “The rent is excessive on neither place,” said Jack.

  “Rent is always excessive if you can’t afford it,” remarked Mr. Garden.

  Jack had a feeling that Mr. Garden was about to get to the heart of the matter. “Mr. Garden, I am in considerable pain,” Jack said. “Considerable physical pain, and considerable pain of the heart as well.”

  “Ah yes, Miss Bright.”

  Yes, Jack thought, not really surprised, he knows about Susan as well. “Mr. Garden, would you please tell me the purpose of your visit this afternoon. Tell me as quickly and as succinctly as possible. If it’s bad news, putting off telling me won’t make it any better. If it’s good news—”

  “Oh, it’s certainly not good news, Mr. Beaumont.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Mr. Beaumont, a few weeks ago, an acquaintance of your uncle’s happened to be dining in Mouquin’s.”

  Jack looked up sharply. So it had been a mistake to go there after all. He had chosen it because none of his friends liked the place—it was decidedly old-fashioned. But he should have realized that it was likely to be visited by gourmands of his uncle’s generation.

  “And as you were in the company of a female cripple, your presence hardly went unnoticed.”

  “Susan is not a cripple. She was only on crutches. In fact, I was the one responsible for breaking her leg.”

  Mr. Garden smiled a thin little smile that said, I’m not a bit surprised to hear it.

  “Your appearance was mentioned, en passant, to your uncle, who was, as you might imagine, quite surprised to learn that you were in town. For to his knowledge, you were in Havana—for your health”—Mr. Garden spoke the last words with supercilious disapproval. “Naturally, your uncle telephoned your apartments on Twenty-third Street to determine why you had not called on him immediately upon your return, and why you had not resumed your position of responsibility in the firm. No answer was forthcoming, Mr. Beaumont, and your uncle became worried. He instituted inquiries. He questioned his friend as to whether he might not have been mistaken in marking you in the restaurant. The friend said that despite a growth of facial hair that he had not seen before, you were most indubitably you. Your uncle dispatched telegrams to Havana. He paid a personal visit to New York’s commissioner of police.”

  “Oh, lord,” sighed Jack.

  “You remained elusive, Mr. Beaumont, until several days ago, when you were reported to be a patient in Bellevue Hospital. It was an easy matter then to discover your address from the hospital authorities, and a series of interviews with the inhabitants of this apartment building provided a substantial account of your tenure here. All of this was reported to your uncle, Mr. Beaumont, and I do not believe that I go too far in interpretation when I say to you that your uncle was very displeased to learn of it.”

  “I can begin to imagine,” said Jack ruefully.

  “‘Unquenchable ire at an unforgiveable betrayal,’ is a phrase that springs to mind,” said Mr. Garden.

  Jack uncrossed his legs and discovered that one of them had gone to sleep, and now was heavy as lead and tingling with pins and needles. He ignored the discomfort and crossed his leg the other way. “There’s more,” Jack said. “I feel quite sure there’s more.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Garden. “To put it bluntly, as you requested, you are relieved of your position with Beaumont, Beaumont, and Beaumont.”

  None of those three Beaumonts was Jack himself, but referred to his uncle, his late father, and his much later grandfather. Jack had always looked forward to the day a fourth Beaumont would be added. That day was suddenly receding into the distance.

  “My uncle is going to sack me?” said Jack. He was calm—in the way a ship’s captain is calm when a torpedo has blown a hole in the hull, lightning has struck the mainmast, and general mutiny has just been declared among the crew.

  “No,” said Mr. Garden, ever precise. “He already has. I do not betray a confidence, I think, when I also tell you that he has struck you from his will.”

  “He’s done all this because I didn’t go to Havana?”

  “Because you didn’t go to Havana, because you lied to him, because you have lowered yourself to the position of an impoverished tinkerer, and consorted with actors and”—Mr. Garden’s voice lowered dramatically—“moving-picture people. Mr. Beaumont, your uncle considers that you have brought eternal and irreparable shame on the house of Beaumont, Beaumont, and Beaumont.”

  “Not exactly,” Jack pointed out, “if my uncle is the only one who knows about all this.”

  “He is not, in point of fact. Notice of your brave and daring rescue of the night watchman at the Cosmic Film Company appeared in the Sun and the Times. It escaped our notice at the time, for we thought naturally that you were in Havana, and the article referred to some other John A. Beaumont, Esq.”

  “‘Brave and daring…’” Jack repeated thoughtfully.

  “Bravery and daring have their place,” said Mr. Garden sententiously, “on the high seas, on the battlefield, in the jungles of Africa. But bravery and daring have no place in a company devoted to financial investments. In fact, so far as your uncle is concerned, bravery and daring are substantial disqualifications for the position which you so lately occupied.”

  Jack stretched out in his chair and inadvertently banged his head against the wall; it seemed appropriate. “Mr. Garden, is this all? I really was advised by my doctors to get some rest.”

  “Not quite all,” said Mr. Garden. “I’ve saved the good news for last.”

  “There’s good news?”

  “Yes. No cloud is without its silver lining, after all. No longer attached to the house of Beaumont, Beaumont, and Beaumont, you are now
perfectly free to marry Miss Bright. Your uncle hopes you will be very happy together—in some other part of the country.”

  “Mr. Garden?”

  “Yes, Mr. Beaumont?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you look like a beet in a snowstorm?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JACK KNEW WHY his uncle was doing this to him—any excuse for a disinheritance. Jack’s uncle had remarried recently, a lady from the South—that region of the country that breeds ladies who are the most mercenary creatures on earth. Especially the widowed variety, with offspring from the previous marriage. And this particular widow had three sons, each more dissolute than the last, and her plan was to siphon off the Beaumont inheritance into their rapacious hands. Jack, like his father before him, had never gotten along with his uncle. It had been a great nuisance that by the terms of the will of Jack’s grandfather, the firm’s assets had gone entirely to Jack’s uncle. Now it appeared to Jack that he was to be cut out entirely.

  Soon after the wordless departure of Mr. Garden, Jack lay down on his bed and thought about all this, but soon fell asleep and dreamed of Susan in Hosmer Collamore’s arms. It was a nightmare.

  He awoke in a sweat and was immediately overcome by an obsession: to find out where Susan and Hosmer had gone. The matter of his stolen inheritance could wait for a while. After all, his uncle wasn’t dead yet.

  His current financial situation, however, was a concern, especially if it proved necessary to go chasing Susan and Hosmer far. He had not received any salary since he’d left Beaumont, Beaumont, and Beaumont on his “trip to Cuba,” but had lived off a small supply of cash he’d brought with him from Twenty-third Street, and that supply was almost gone. In fact, he had less than ten dollars. His checking account contained nearly two hundred dollars, but that would be eaten up by the hospital bill.