Perfect Romance

by Duncan, Alice

  A pause ensued. When Loretta turned to glance at her companion, she saw Marjorie eyeing her tan gloves in dismay. “Take ‘em off if you’re afraid they’ll get dirty.” Because Loretta truly esteemed her secretary and believed that the woman was not beyond redemption, she tried always to keep her temper, even when Marjorie tried her patience. What did gloves matter, when compared to human lives?

  With a sigh, Marjorie sacrificed her gloves and pushed at the door, and Loretta finally managed to get it locked. “Did you bring the Runabout?” Loretta stuffed the door key into her handbag and pushed her spectacles, which had slid down her nose during her struggle with the door, back into place.

  “Yes.”

  Loretta heard the edge to her secretary’s voice and eyed her slantwise. “I know you don’t care to drive the automobile, Marjorie, but it’s good to do things that frighten you occasionally. Otherwise, you’ll become a mass of nerves and neuroses and you’ll never get better.”

  “I know.” Marjorie compressed her lips as if she were holding back a sharp retort.

  “I think,” Loretta mused, “that it might be good if I were to make you an appointment with Dr. Hagendorf. He’s an excellent alienist.”

  “I dinna need to see an alienist,” Marjorie averred. “I’m’na crazy.”

  Eyeing her secretary with reproach, Loretta said, “Alienists aren’t just for crazy people. Dr. Hagendorf can help with your phobias.”

  “They aren’t phobias, Loretta. I dinna even believe in phobias!”

  “I can’t see that it matters whether you believe in them or not. You seem to have at least one.”

  Marjorie huffed.

  With a sigh, Loretta wondered if the woman would ever overcome her inhibitions. Two years had passed since that awful, horrid night when Titanic had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic, taking over fifteen hundred people with it. But Marjorie was as steeped in her terror of the ocean deeps as ever. Her anxiety about driving the Runabout was minor compared to her complete and absolute dread of the ocean.

  Marjorie’s case was a sad one, and one that had entailed a complete life change for the poor woman. But Loretta wasn’t giving up on her. She honestly believed that Marjorie would benefit from seeing Dr. Hagendorf, a friend of Loretta’s, and an alienist devoted to the methods of Dr. Sigmund Freud.

  Naturally, when Loretta had first brought up the subject, Marjorie had been shocked and had rebelled against doing anything so contrary to her conformist ways. Loretta trusted in her powers of persuasion, however, and she expected Marjorie to cave in to her stronger will one of these days.

  The two women had reached Loretta’s Runabout. “Hop in,” she said cheerily, and thought wryly that it would be a cold day in hell before poor Marjorie MacTavish hopped anywhere.

  Marjorie got into the machine, however, and Loretta cranked the engine to life. Then, since Marjorie couldn’t be made to hop, Loretta did so, leaping into her automobile as agilely as if she were a child instead of a twenty-eight-year-old spinster lady past her last hopes. Not, of course, that she considered herself thus. That was only society’s opinion. Loretta knew better.

  She swerved into traffic, and Marjorie let out a yelp. “There’s no need to scream, Marjorie. I know what I’m doing.”

  Marjorie’s only reply was a whimper. Glancing at her, Loretta wondered how a person could accumulate so many disabling terrors during a relatively short lifetime. Granted, poor Marjorie had lost many friends and co-workers, not to mention her career as a stewardess, when that ship had hit the iceberg and sunk, but she still seemed awfully poor-spirited to Loretta.

  Another friend of theirs, Isabel FitzRoy, nee Golightly, claimed it was because Marjorie had grown up in Scotland, where class distinctions and strict rules of behavior had been instilled in her from birth, and that Loretta should stop hounding poor Marjorie. Loretta resented that. She didn’t consider her hints and lectures hounding. She was only trying to help.

  Isabel had said with a laugh that one person’s meat is another person’s poison, but Loretta couldn’t see what that had to do with anything. She vowed to keep trying with Marjorie. Perhaps one day the woman would emerge from her shell.

  They managed to arrive at Loretta’s mammoth Russian Hill abode without hitting anything extraneous on the way. As usual when she traveled with Loretta, Marjorie muttered a brief, whispered prayer of thanks before exiting the automobile. Shaking her head, Loretta entertained a rare uncertainty about her ability to help Marjorie ever loosen up.

  It wasn’t until her housekeeper, Mrs. Brandeis, opened the door to them that Loretta remembered the parcel she’d meant to bring home. “Drat!” she cried, stopping short so that Marjorie bumped into her. She turned. “I beg your pardon, Marjorie. I left Eunice’s birthday present at the soup kitchen. I’ll have to run back and fetch it.”

  Marjorie said stiffly, “I should fetch it for you, Loretta. I’m your secretary, after all.”

  “Fiddlesticks! It was my mistake. I’ll get it.” And that was another thing: She couldn’t seem to convince Marjorie that she was Loretta’s secretary, not her slave. She clattered down the front porch steps and turned to wave at her secretary and housekeeper. “I’ll be back before dinnertime. If the FitzRoys arrive early, tell them I’m sorry and I’ll be home soon!”

  She wasn’t certain, but she thought she heard Marjorie mumble something. Fortunately, Loretta couldn’t hear what it was.

  # # #

  “Blasted lock,” Loretta’s eyeglasses slid down her nose as she set her shoulder against the door, pushed as hard as she could, and tried to turn the key. It didn’t turn. It was as stuck as stuck could be.

  It came, therefore, as a shock to her when the door burst open, a hand like a ham grabbed her and slammed her against the wall, her spectacles flew across the room and clattered to the floor, and an arm as big around as a tree trunk pinioned her by means of her throat. She would have screamed, had she been able, but she was being quite effectively throttled by the arm, and she couldn’t. In lieu of other options, she kicked like a mule.

  “Damnation! Ow! Stop that!”

  She gurgled back, furious, and kicked again.

  “Will you stop that?”

  The arm withdrew from her throat, and Loretta managed to shriek “Help!” before she was spun around and hugged against a body like a giant redwood tree, this time by two arms like tree trunks. She presumed the second arm belonged to the same man who’d pinioned her against the wall. One of the hands attached to one of the arms covered her mouth. It was so big, it also covered her nose and chin. Scarcely able to maneuver her lips apart, but fighting for her life, she bit into a part of the hand. She didn’t know which part it was, but her action produced another bellow of rage and another spate of swear words.

  “Damn it!”

  The arms loosened and the hands grabbed her shoulders, uncovering her mouth, which she’d have used to scream some more, except that whoever belonged to the ham-like hands, the redwood-tree body, and the tree-trunk arms started shaking her. Her teeth clanked together and she feared her neck would snap. So she kicked out again, this time a little higher, and her captor might have lost something of value to him if he hadn’t jumped aside. Loretta was very disappointed.

  “You damned little cat!” the beast shouted. “Stop that!”

  All at once, the room flooded with light, the shaking ceased, and Loretta finally saw the man belonging to the arms, hands, and body. Out of breath and pulsating with terror and rage, she balled her right hand into a fist, and aimed a punch at the monster’s stomach. He caught her fist in the hand with which he’d pulled the light cord and held it. Hard. Loretta now feared for her fingers.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  Panting, she glared up into two of the fiercest brown eyes she’d ever encountered, including even her own, which could be extremely fierce when she was roused. She was roused now. She wanted to kill this person, whoever he was. “Who are you?” she snarled back. “I belong here! You
don’t.”

  “Huh.”

  Whoever he was, and even without her eyeglasses, Loretta could see that he was brown as the proverbial berry, as big as a house, strong as Hercules, and wore one gold earring that glinted in the light shining down upon them from the single bare bulb on the ceiling. Loretta saw that he also had on a black cape and a cap with gold braid on it. She’d never seen anyone dressed exactly that way before.

  She also realized that, although he’d brutally manhandled her, her fear was vanishing fast, perhaps because he was staring at her in so puzzled a fashion. She doubted that a man truly lost to all morality would bother to register confusion before dispatching his victim. He released her hand at last and she stepped away from him, tugging at her shirtwaist and skirt, which had become disarranged in the row.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  He, too, straightened. “Quarles,” he said in a voice like rolling thunder. “Captain Malachai Quarles.” He gave her a tight grin. “Your turn.”

  Loretta, who possessed a literal mind, wondered only for a second what he meant by that. Understanding struck, and she said, “My name is Miss Loretta Linden. What are you doing here, Captain Quarles? I presume you aren’t a mere cat burglar.” She sniffed. “If you are, you’re a stupid one. There’s nothing in the soup kitchen worth stealing. We serve the poor.”

  “Huh.” Captain Quarles turned away from Loretta and stooped to glance under a table. “I got a tip that one of my crewmen might be here.”

  “We are near the dock,” Loretta said. With another sniff, she added, “Don’t you feed your crewmen, Captain Quarles?”

  He didn’t deign to reply, but continued searching. Loretta was unused to being ignored. While her height was unimpressive, being a mere five feet and a bit, she had a powerful personality and was accustomed to people recognizing her as a force to be reckoned with. Yet Captain Quarles was doing an excellent job of pretending she wasn’t even there. He looked under another table.

  “Are you expecting your crewman to have expired from drink? Is that why you’re searching under the tables?” She’d aimed for sarcasm, and was proud of the result.

  Obviously unimpressed, Captain Quarles said, “Huh,” again.

  Irked, Loretta spotted two gleaming circles lying on the floor not far off, went over and picked up her eyeglasses, and hooked the earpieces over her ears. Now that she could see him clearly, she decided that he bore no resemblance whatsoever, in the least little degree, to her notion of a sea captain, perhaps because of her experience on-board—and off—Titanic. Captain John Edward Smith would forever be engraved in her memory as the epitome of a ship’s captain.

  On the other hand, Captain Smith had allowed his ship to smash up against an iceberg and had died for his mistake, along with most of his crew and the passengers, so perhaps her notion needed revision.

  Tabling the captain issue for the moment, she stamped up to Quarles, grabbed one of his massive arms, and tried to turn him around to face her. The tactic didn’t work, as Captain Quarles was approximately as malleable as a granite statue.

  Since she couldn’t budge him, she decided to pester him instead. “If you’ll condescend to tell me who your crewman is and why you think he’s here, perhaps I can help you locate him.” It sounded reasonable to her. She wondered if the captain would agree with her.

  He seemed to. Straightening, he squinted down at her. He was a tall man, although not exceptionally so. Loretta judged him to be about six feet tall. But he was built like a monument. He also had curly dark hair that was longer than need be, eyebrows that didn’t arch but tilted slightly upward at the outer edges, giving him the look of a pagan idol, and full lips. And then there was that earring. Loretta swallowed, thinking it would be easier to stand up to the man if he were a shade less alarming.

  “What do you have to do with this place?” he asked. His voice rumbled like thunder even when, as now, he wasn’t speaking loudly. He’d nearly deafened her when he’d roared at her to stop kicking him.

  “I am a volunteer.” Loretta said it proudly. The irrelevant thought that she might look better if she hadn’t replaced her eyeglasses flitted through her mind, and she swatted it away as if it were a pesky fly.

  “Huh. I figured you for a do-gooder.”

  “That’s a disparaging term and one I do not allow to—”

  He interrupted her, waving her explanation away with a powerful hand, as if he didn’t care what she allowed or didn’t allow. “I’m looking for Derrick Peavey. You know him?”

  “The men who avail themselves of our services don’t normally give us their names,” she said, outraged at having been thwarted while delivering a lecture.

  “Yeah? Can’t say as I blame them. What’s that room there?” He pointed.

  Irate, but unable to think of a reason to deny him the information, especially since she didn’t expect he’d be deterred by her silence, Loretta growled, “The kitchen.”

  “Huh.” Captain Malachai Quarles strode toward the kitchen door, his cape swirling around his booted feet, and bringing to Loretta’s mind tales of swashbuckling pirates and adventurers and so forth. She hated when her mind did that. She tried so hard to keep it under control, too. Peeved that he wasn’t deferring to her, she rushed after him.

  He didn’t seem to notice. Opening the door, he looked right and left, found what he was seeking, and pulled the chain. Another bare bulb, this one illuminating the kitchen, flared to life. Loretta heard the captain grunt, and then he vanished into the room. She hurried inside. Unlike the captain, Loretta, who prided herself on her nerves of iron but was tender-hearted in spite of herself, uttered a gasp of consternation.

  Captain Quarles knelt beside a man huddled on the floor before the kitchen counter. The man’s head rested in a small pool of blood, and several small, shiny yellow disks lay scattered around him. Ignoring the disks, Loretta ran over to Captain Quarles and gazed down at the victim, aghast. Then she recognized him. “Why, it’s the Moor man!”

  The captain glanced up at her, and she detected antipathy on his hard face. “Peavey isn’t a Mormon, for God’s sake. He’s a sailor!”

  Vexed, Loretta knelt beside the captain. “I didn’t mean that he’s a Mormon, although I don’t know why a Mormon can’t be a sailor. What I meant was that he was talking about the Moors this afternoon when he came in for his soup and sandwich.”

  “Ah.” Captain Quarles nodded as if this information came as no surprise to him.

  He didn’t enlighten Loretta, who took his silence amiss. “Well?” she demanded. “Why was he talking about the Moors? He wasn’t making any sense.”

  The captain had opened Peavey’s coat and shirt and was pressing his ear to the man’s chest. He scowled at Loretta, who correctly interpreted this as a signal for her to keep still so he could verify that his crew member still lived. Loretta was beginning to seriously dislike the brusque captain. It came as a surprise to her when his harsh features softened, and he heaved a huge sigh.

  “He’s alive.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I doubt that God had much to do with it. More likely it’s Peavey’s hard head.” The captain reached for the mentioned head, and made as if to lift him.

  Concerned, Loretta leaned over to grab his arm. “Don’t raise his head! He might have a concussion.” Her bosom pressed against the captain’s arm, and she felt heat flow through her body from the point of contact to her nether limbs. She’d never had such a reaction to a man’s touch before, and it embarrassed her. She tried to pretend nothing was wrong.

  “What do you suggest I do?” the captain asked with sarcasm which, unlike that of her secretary, was unconcealed. He didn’t seem one bit interested in Loretta’s bosom, either, which was perhaps more mortifying than the fact that her bosom pressed against his arm in the first place. Abruptly she released him and sat back on her heels. Her breasts felt as if they had been branded.

  Sucking in a deep bre
ath and telling herself not to shout at the boorish man because she didn’t want to be one bit like him, Loretta said, “I shall call a physician friend of mine. He can tell if it’s safe to move him and what should be done for him. This man might have to be hospitalized.”

  “Huh. Peavey won’t like that.” The captain frowned at his fallen employee.

  “Nevertheless, if he has a concussion, great care must be taken before moving him.” It irked Loretta that she sounded so prim and stuffy. She was accustomed to numbering among her friends all of the most liberated and forward-thinking individuals in San Francisco. Neither she nor they were stuffy. The captain brought out her very worst characteristics, and she disliked him for it.

  She wondered if he’d be nicer to her if she wasn’t wearing her spectacles. Then she swore at herself for so much as thinking about so trivial a matter under the circumstances.

  “All right. Call the damned doctor.”

  With a huff, Loretta stood and patted her skirt down. “There’s no need to swear.”

  He rolled his eyes, and Loretta stomped to the telephone, which was in the back room of the soup kitchen. First she dialed her friend, Dr. Jason Abernathy, who ran a clinic for the poor in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. Dr. Abernathy said he’d be right over.

  Then she called the police. Anticipating indifference at best and refusal to assist at worst, she wasn’t surprised when the person who answered the telephone at the police station didn’t seem interested in a brutal attack upon an individual the policeman considered a derelict.

  “I demand that you send a team to investigate this matter,” Loretta told the policeman in her sternest voice. “This man, whatever his position in life, was attacked inside the Ladies’ Benevolence League’s Soup Kitchen on Powell Street. He’s still alive, but that may change, in which case your department will be investigating a case of murder!”

  The policeman remained unmoved. In fact, he sounded a trifle bored. Loretta’s brow creased when she heard his next words.

  “My name,” she responded stiffly—she generally didn’t approve of trading on her name, although it was an old and honorable one in the city by the bay—” is Loretta Linden. That’s L-i-n-d-e-n.” She listened to the man’s next question with a wry expression on her face. “Yes. He’s my father.”