The Protégé

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “The point is this, Doctor,” she snapped. “I need to know whether or not in truth his buddy was a leper.”

  “Why, certainly. The minute they picked him up with his leg smashed, they shipped him quick to Hale Mohalu.”

  Mrs. Moffat said nothing. Her lips were dry.

  “How’s the Allenstag kid doing?” Dr. Grant inquired, in a voice that was subtly less cordial and open.

  “Not well.”

  “That’s not surprising,” said Dr. Grant. “If you ask me, he dug himself a hole and pulled it in after him. He’ll never get out.”

  “In your opinion, he doesn’t deserve to?” she said. “Well, thank you, Doctor.”

  “Women!” she heard him say, and then, “Where are you calling from, Doctor? I would like to follow up—”

  She hung up and slithered down toward the foot of her bed, pulling the afghan high around her shoulders.

  She was old and cold, and her bones ached. She had gone to work and found out what the boy hadn’t wanted her to know, and it was bad and sad. If Tommy Moffat was being so horribly punished, she didn’t know that he deserved it. Poor child. Poor child. As for the lad who was Simon to her, she could not even imagine whoever would get him out of the pit that he was in. Unless, under a name that was a lie, and safely out of traffic, he had been able to stay here every day and play in the garden. She wanted to cry, but snuffled valiantly instead.

  Ah, well, either his father would come here before his son went away, or his father would not. And if his father did come in time, he would know what to do, or he would not.

  And Zan was safe, after all. And there was another chunk of information.

  At the time of that riot in Seoul, at the time of the house of the lepers—and before—before Simon had so much as laid eyes on Tommy Moffat, that man was already a leper and cared nothing—oh, nothing cared he—for danger to the health of his buddy.

  This was too sad, too bad to think about.

  She moved her head on the pillow restlessly and slipped over into another world. She was so fond of that boy. They had had such delightful times. She remembered the day they had watched a colony of ants for an hour and a half. Mrs. Moffat in a garden chair, absurdly using her opera glasses, and Simon on his belly, and the two of them giving the mysterious little creatures names like Busy Boy and Isobel and the pallbearers—she remembered them—as plain and as clear as could be.

  She had not, she remembered, with the tip of her cane “created” a “Chinese wall” around their entire city, thus becoming their luck.

  She must remember Moffat’s law. She had, in fact, two points of view. There was the strict array of links and chains, cause and effect, reward and punishment, where all her deeds and choices had accumulated until she stood on good repute as on a coral reef, and how gratifying that could be.

  But there was another way to squint up her mind. A mode she had lately known quite often, when one may adopt a heady willingness to take whatever is given and call it neither reward nor punishment and so snatch up delight and any lucky thing, knowing that, just as if it were love—were love—you don’t have to deserve it.

  The afternoon was getting on. Zan said on the phone, “Well, you see, Mrs. Adams, unfortunately I have this engagement to spend the night with a friend, and I also know that she feels just a little ashamed not to have called you and Mrs. Darrell for so long, and she probably won’t. But my grandmother is going to be feeling in need of company this evening. I wondered if you might drop in casually, all the same. And not say I asked you? She’d be so pleased. Well, you see, Simon Warren is leaving tomorrow, and she is going to miss him, I’m afraid. I had thought of calling the Keatings. Do you think I should?”

  The red-bearded boy trudged along the sidewalk. His bright head caught the eye of a passing motorist, who glanced back over his shoulder to look again and saw no one on the sidewalk.

  The boy was threading through the stand of shrubs along the Hallorans’ driveway. He darted across to the side door at ground level. It opened to his touch.

  Nobody was in the house. He looked everywhere. He put his package of medicine on the coffee table in the living room. He sat down in a wing chair in a corner to wait.

  Mrs. Moffat slept until almost six o’clock, which was a scandal.

  She washed and dressed in her blue and went down, apologizing. Polly said she’d tiptoed up to see two times. Dinner was on the stove. It could be held back. Everything was under control. And Simon had not come home yet.

  Mrs. Moffat said that she did not expect him for dinner. She would dine in half an hour, please.

  She sat down in her rocker to wait, nevertheless.

  The man had no scruples about breaking out the screen on one of the windows at the back of the cottage with the spade. He dropped the tool over the high sill and came head first and tumbled awkwardly to the floor. No one was in the place.

  He crossed to the window on the other side; he could just see through a maze of branches his grandmother’s back porch. He thought there was movement. A rocking chair?

  Oh, well, broad daylight. He had a pint in his pocket.

  He sprawled on old Mr. McGregor’s bed to wait.

  Nicky paid the waiter from room service and brought Zan her drink.

  “Now,” he said, “take it from the top.”

  Zan was very much subdued and showed no sign of hysteria.

  She described the morning’s events, beginning with the cottage. “I don’t know what he told her. He must have told her something. He told her he was leaving. I’m sure of that.”

  “All to the good, not so?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Why so depressed?”

  “It depresses me to look at myself,” she admitted. “Such a befuddlement and a confusion of values.”

  “Go on.”

  “If I’d believed that Gran is in physical danger while that boy is there, then nothing, absolutely nothing—no names she could call me, no insults—could have made me leave her. And if I didn’t believe that, I ought to have gone quietly when I was asked.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable analysis.” Nicky drank to that.

  “Reason has nothing to do with this,” Zan said. “I’m afraid. It’s emotion. I don’t know what I’m afraid of. My heart sinks down with a sickening slide—I don’t know why.

  “I’ve got my finger on the house—an ear in the house. I spoke to Polly. He is not there now. Not expected for dinner. Crystal and Claire and Joe and Flo all will be dropping in there this evening. She should be safe until they leave. But that’s only a reasonable assumption. Not necessarily true.”

  Nicky was staring at her. “You fixed it so the old lady isn’t going to get a last quiet evening with her young friend, eh? Seems to me you must believe something.”

  Zan put down her glass and held her skull with all her fingers. “About nine thirty I want you to drive me there.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m going to sit outside at the back, watching, until the sun comes up.”

  “What good is that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid.”

  “For God’s sake, Zan, call the police.”

  “What would I say?”

  Nicky drained his glass. “Never did I expect to hear such illogical girl talk coming out of you,” he said. “But—it has its appeal. What can I do but come sit, too?”

  “All right.” Zan’s smile was radiant. “And that’s darn sporting of you, Nicky.”

  “Well,” he said, “could be there’s a little something I haven’t told you, that has revised my thinking to a degree. The boy who’s staying with your grandmother is not Simon Warren.”

  “No?”

  “I spoke to the real Simon Warren myself, on the phone to Bryn Mawr.”

  Zan seemed to go into a trance. “I’ll bet that’s what he told her. I’ll bet that’s what he told her this morning. She wouldn’t care, you know.”

  “Why wouldn’t she car
e?”

  “No, no. No, no. I understand that. She just doesn’t care.”

  “You understand that?”

  “Yes, I do!” Zan said, blind-eyed.

  Joe and Flo and Crystal and Claire descended on Mrs. Moffat before the dark came down. Polly was delighted to see them.

  The day had been so warm, hadn’t it? Marguerite’s porch was wonderfully cool. Where was her guest, the Warren boy? Was it true that he was leaving?

  Mrs. Moffat replied that the day had been somewhat warm, but her porch wonderfully cool. The Warren boy was out. Yes, of course, he was leaving, and how had they guessed? Had someone told them?

  “Oh, Marguerite, you will miss him, won’t you? Such a nice boy—you say.”

  In a way, Mrs. Moffat admitted, she would miss him; yet in a way she would not really.

  Polly turned on the lamp that hung over the table and the lamp that stood behind the settee.

  The black-bearded man crept out the cottage door in the new dark and crouched low to see past the stems of the shrubs. The porch was lit and full of people. He squinted and stared intently; not one of them was Zan.

  The red-bearded boy slept in the wing chair and now and then whimpered.

  Zan searched the hotel room for extra blankets. The night might turn chilly. Nicky had no overcoat; Zan no woolen garments. Their mutual resolve to do something as silly as what they were about to do had cheered them enormously. They were full of quips and laughter.

  Joe and Flo and Crystal and Claire left at nine. Mrs. Moffat came back to the porch, where Polly was collecting the glasses, and gazed out toward the dark cottage.

  “You’ll be sitting up, I suppose,” said Polly.

  “No,” said her mistress. “I didn’t sleep at all last night, and I must be up early in the morning. So I’m going to bed now. You must be tired, Polly. Don’t wash any dishes. Go to bed, do.”

  Mrs. Moffat locked the screen door. She went into the sitting room and locked the double-glass doors. The sitting-room, lights went out. Polly put the porch light out and went into the kitchen and locked the kitchen doors. The kitchen light went out.

  In the Halloran kitchen the red-bearded boy dashed cold water on his eyes.

  Chapter 14

  The phone rang in Zan’s room.

  “Miss Zan! Miss Zan!”

  “Yes, Polly. Yes? What is it?”

  “He’s in the yard. He’s digging! He’s digging like he’s digging a grave. I didn’t see him come in, but there he is—digging. What shall I do?”

  “I’m coming, right away. Don’t let him in the house. Don’t let him near Gran. I’ll be there in two shakes.”

  Polly let her instrument clatter into its cradle. She was in the front hall. She looked fearfully up the stairs. She turned suddenly and tottered on her old feet, and crossed the small square space to the door of Mr. Moffat’s den.

  Upstairs, Mrs. Moffat had removed only her dress and put on her dark-blue tailored robe, since there was still the possibility of Simon’s father appearing—how far into the night she could not guess. She tied the dark-blue sash firmly. She had heard every word that Polly had said.

  She plucked her flashlight from the bed-table drawer and marched down the stairs. To her consternation Polly, in a sack of a nightgown and nothing else, was standing in the door to her husband’s private place, holding his gun in her shaky old hand.

  “Put that down,” commanded Mrs. Moffat in ringing anger. “What is the matter with you? It’s only Simon out there. He’s not digging any grave. I know exactly what he’s digging for. Sit down before you fall down, and try to behave yourself.”

  Mrs. Moffat marched into the sitting room, using the flashlight instead of stopping to light the lamps.

  She unlocked the double doors, crossed the porch, unlocked the screen, and stepped out into the freshness of the night. She had her shoes on; no need to shuffle in bedroom slippers, but she had forgotten her cane. Ah, well, it was not really dark. Best, she thought, to go by the bounce of the city lights on the high dome of the sky than to use her flashlight close ahead of her feet and blacken all the rest of the scene.

  She could see him, a colorless figure in this light, bent over the spade, bearded chin to his breast, moving in jerky rhythm. Stabbing the ground with the blade of the spade, stepping back, and making shallow scooping undercuts to strip away the sod, there in the very center of the back lawns.

  Oh, yes, she knew what he was after.

  But it was very sad.

  Tommy Moffat had been a child, aged eleven, the year that he (and Simon Warren?) had stolen his grandmother’s jewel box, and he had thought as a child. How pitiful that he still did think as a child and had sent this “Simon,” within a boy’s adventure story, to find what he had thought was treasure, her beads and things.

  The original pedestal of the sundial had been deep-rooted, so they had left a column of concrete in the ground. She could hear the spade clink-clank against it. The digger crouched to grope with his fingers in the loosened soil.

  Mrs. Moffat’s eyes were full of tears because this was so sad.

  “Oh, no, oh, no, my dear,” she called out, tremulously. “They are not worth anything. I was never a rich enough woman for real pearls.”

  He sprang up. He was grasping the spade at the middle of its handle with his right hand. With his left he swung at the old lady.

  Mrs. Moffat staggered, and lacking her cane, she fell.

  Zan, pelting through the house, burst out on the porch just in time to see this happen and then the jumping-jack figure with the weapon in his hand brandish it and turn his bearded face to the sky.

  Zan burst through the screen door and ran on the grass, screaming.

  Nicky, who had delayed to take the old gun away from Polly, was not far behind. He wasn’t at all sure the gun was fit to be fired. It was loaded, but Nicky could easily imagine it blowing to bits in his hand. He could hear Zan.

  There was something strangely pure in Zan’s screaming. Body, heart, mind, and soul cried, “No! You won’t hurt her! No! You won’t!”

  Blood run cold, thought Nicky, his own feet pounding the turf.

  The man was defeated. Bent over, his arms up, curved hands protecting his head, he scuttled, like a big spider, for the deeper darkness.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot,” shouted Nicky, but impurely. (He didn’t mean it. The threat was ridiculous!) The man vanished.

  Zan was on two knees and one elbow, with the other arm under the old lady’s shoulders.

  “Oh, Gran, did he hurt you? Does anything hurt you? Are you all right? Oh, darling Gran, please be all right.”

  “I do believe I’m more or less all right,” said Mrs. Moffat slowly. She flexed her right ankle. She thought, I’ll be black-and-blue tomorrow.

  The ground was very hard. Blades of grass prickled the skin at the sides of her neck, which was odd and unpleasant. But her limbs did seem disposed in an ordinary way—nothing awry. “I’m probably catching my death of a cold,” she continued dreamily.

  Zan began to laugh and cry.

  Mrs. Moffat saw him standing high behind Nicky’s bent back and over Zan’s knotted-up body.

  “Simon,” she said calmly, “will you please pick me up and carry me? Nicholas has that gun to hold, and Zan’s not strong enough. I wasn’t rich enough for pearls.”

  Zan rolled over and bounded to her feet, hissing like an angry tortoise.

  Nicky said, “Hold it, fella. Hold it.”

  But Simon paid no attention to either of them. He squatted and began to slip his arms gently under Mrs. Moffat, hunching his shoulders against Zan’s frantic fists hammering his back.

  “Oh, Zan,” said Mrs. Moffat. “Let him alone. You don’t always see what you think you see.”

  Nicky said, “Let him alone, Zan.” He pulled her away. He held the gun on Simon. This seemed the only solution. He couldn’t carry the old lady and hold the gun, too. He dared not give the gun to Zan.

  Simon lifted. Mrs.
Moffat gently and began to carry her carefully across her own backyard.

  So strange was this night—so strange.

  Zan ran ahead and opened the screen door. “Indoors,” she cried.

  So Simon put Mrs. Moffat down gently in her recliner there in the sitting room as Zan snapped on lights.

  Zan said, “I saw it, you know. What do you mean, I didn’t see what I thought I saw?” She was blazing at Simon.

  “Mrs. Moffat,” said Simon, “if you’re okay, may I be excused?”

  “No!” howled Zan.

  “Hold it,” said Nicky.

  Simon glanced at him, curiously.

  “All right, he’s not Simon Warren,” cried Zan. “I suppose you know that?”

  “Yes, yes,” said the old lady wearily.

  “Who is he?”

  Mrs. Moffat rubbed her forehead, moving her head to do so. She was shivering.

  “I’m going to call the doctor,” cried Zan. “And somebody to come and make some sense. You watch him, Nicky.” Zan dashed out to the porch, fetched Mrs. Moffat’s stole and spread it over her. Then she hurried the length of the sitting room and was appalled to find Polly still in the hall, bolt upright in the chair by the telephone, looking quite mad. Zan managed to break the poor woman’s terrified tension, but she thought Polly must stay very still until the doctor saw her. She found Dr. Sebastian’s number on the list and dialed it and stood dancing with impatience until she realized that the phone was dead.

  The three persons in the sitting room were silent and motionless.

  Nicky had been sensing that the boy wished desperately to speak to the old lady, but dared not, in Nicky’s presence. The old lady had suffered some kind of shock, of course. She was struggling with worry. The boy was anxious to get away; before that, he needed something from her. Some reassurance?

  Nicky gave it up. Had he been the blushing kind, he would have been crimson from top to toe. He was mortified—disgraced in his own sight. He fervently hoped that Zan had not heard and no one would report around this town or anywhere else the idiotic grade-B piece of dialogue that had come out of his, Nicky Pomerance’s, mouth. “Halt or I’ll shoot.” His spirit burrowed deep, away from the memory. It hid for shame. What a ridiculous command to be shouting in somebody’s suburban backyard, while holding a gun that he would not fire on a bet. He had since bethought himself of a very corny epitaph Nicky did not care to acquire.