How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  “I don’t think so. He asked me for a date tonight.”

  “Did you accept?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I—didn’t think you’d want me to.”

  “You might have gotten some useful information.”

  She stared at the old brick fireplace. She thought of all the fires that had been built there and left to die and she wondered if there’d ever be another one.

  “If I’ve hurt your feelings,” he said in a gentler voice, “I’m sorry, Willie.”

  “Don’t be. Obviously you have more important matters on your mind than my feelings.”

  “I’m glad you see that.”

  “Oh, I do. You’ve made it quite clear.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “Willie, don’t. Please. Be patient with me.”

  “If you’d only tell me what all this is about—”

  “I can’t. It’s a serious business, though. A lot of people are involved, good people.”

  “Does it matter what kind of people they are? And how do you tell the difference between good people and bad people? Do you ask your mother?”

  “Leave her out of it, please. She hasn’t the faintest idea what’s going on.”

  “I’ll leave her out if she’ll leave me out.” She turned to face him, ready for a fight. But he looked too tired and pale to endure a fight. “Forget it, George. Let’s go out and come in again, shall we?”

  “All right.”

  “Hello, George.”

  He smiled. “Hello, Willie.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. And you?”

  “I’m fine, too.” But she turned her face away from his kiss. “This isn’t much better than the first time, is it? You’re not really thinking of me, you’re thinking of Quinn. Aren’t you?”

  “I’m forced to.”

  “Not for long.”

  “What do you mean, not for long?”

  “He’s leaving town.”

  George’s hands dropped to his sides as if she’d slapped them down. “When?”

  “This afternoon, I guess. Maybe right this minute.”

  “Why? Why is he leaving?”

  “He said he had no reason to stay since I wouldn’t go out with him tonight. Naturally he was joking.”

  She waited, hoping George would deny it: Of course Quinn wasn’t joking, my dear. You’re a very attractive woman. He’s probably leaving town to avoid a broken heart.

  “He was joking,” she repeated.

  But George didn’t even hear her this time. He was crossing the room, putting on his hat as he moved.

  “George?”

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Where are you going? We haven’t even talked yet, George.”

  “I haven’t time right now. I’m showing a client the Wilson house out in Greenacres.”

  She knew the Wilson property was being handled by Earl Perkins and that George wouldn’t interfere, but she didn’t argue.

  At the archway that led into the hall he turned and looked back at her. “Do me a favor, will you, Willie?”

  “Certainly. You’re the boss.”

  “Tell my mother I won’t be home for dinner and not to wait up for me.”

  “All right.”

  It was a big favor and they both knew it.

  Willie stood, listening to the front door open and close, then the sound of the station wagon motor and the squeaking of tires as the car made too quick a start. Head bowed, she walked over to the old fireplace. The inside was charred by the heat of a thousand fires. She stretched her hands out in front of her as if one of the fires might have left a little warmth for her.

  After a time she went outside, locking the house behind her, and drove to the post office. Here, from a pay phone, she called George’s house.

  “Mrs. Haywood?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Willie King.”

  “Mrs. King, yes, of course. My son is not at home.”

  Willie clenched her jaws. In all their conversations Mrs. Haywood never referred to George as anything but my son, with a distinct emphasis on the my. “Yes, I know that, Mrs. Haywood. He asked me to tell you he’ll be away for the eve­ning.”

  “Away where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then he won’t be with you?”

  “No.”

  “He’s been away a great many evenings lately, and days, too.”

  “He has a business to run,” Willie said.

  “And of course you’re a big help to him?”

  “I try to be.”

  “Oh, but you are. He tells me you’re a most aggressive salesman—or is it saleswoman? One thing baffles me about my son’s business. I find it quite extraordinary the number of real estate deals that are consummated at night—the word is con­summated, isn’t it?”

  “The word is whatever you want to make it, Mrs. Hay­wood.”

  There was a brief silence during which Willie put her hand over the receiver so that Mrs. Haywood wouldn’t hear her angry breathing.

  “Mrs. King, you and I are both fond of George, aren’t we?”

  I am, Willie thought. You’re not fond of anything. But she said, “Yes.”

  “Has it occurred to you to wonder, perhaps, exactly where he’s going tonight?”

  “That’s his business.”

  “And not yours?”

  “No.” Not yet, she added silently.

  “Dear me, I think it should be your business if you’re as interested in my son as you appear to be. He is, of course, a man of fine character, but he’s human and there are temptresses around.”

  “Are you urging me to spy on him, Mrs. Haywood?”

  “Using one’s eyes and ears is not spying, surely.” There was another silence, as if Mrs. Haywood was taking time out to plan a more devastating attack. But when she spoke again her voice sounded curiously broken. “I have this feeling, this very terrible feeling, that George is in trouble. . . Oh, you and I have never been friendly, Mrs. King, but I haven’t con­sidered you a real threat to George’s welfare.”

  “Thank you,” Willie said dryly. She was puzzled by Mrs. Haywood’s sudden change of voice and attitude. “I have no reason to believe George is in trouble he can’t handle.”

  “He is. I feel it, I know it. It involves a woman.”

  “A woman? I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

  “I wish I were but I’m not. There have been too many things recently, too many unexplained out-of-town trips. Where does he go? What does he do? Whom does he see?”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “Yes. He told me nothing, but he couldn’t hide his guilt. And what else besides a woman would he be feeling guilty about?”

  “I’m quite sure you’re mistaken,” Willie said again. But this time she could hear the doubt in her own voice, and for a long time after she’d hung up she remained in the cramped, airless booth, her forehead resting against the telephone.

  EIGHT

  Finding the dirt lane that led to the Tower was more difficult than Quinn thought it was going to be. He went two or three miles beyond it before’ he realized he had missed it. He made a precarious turn, and driving very slowly, in low gear, he tried to spot the only landmark he could recall, the grove of eucalyptus trees. The piercing sun, the strain of driving around endless blind curves, the utter desolation of the country, were beginning to fray his nerves and undermine his confidence. Ideas that had seemed good in Chicote, decisions that had seemed right, looked frail and foolish against the bleak, brown landscape; and the search for O’Gorman seemed unreal, ab­surd, a fox hunt without a fox.

  A young doe boun
ded out from a clump of scrub oak and leaped gracefully across the road in front of him, avoiding the bumper of the car by inches. She looked healthy and well-nourished. Quinn thought, She didn’t get that way on the food supply she’d find around here at this time of year. I must be near irrigated land.

  He stopped the car at the top of the next hill and looked around. In the distance, to the east, he saw something glisten in the slanting rays of the sun. It was his first view of the Tower itself, a mere reflection of light from glass.

  He released the brake and the car rolled silently down the hill. Half a mile farther on he spotted the grove of eucalyptus trees and the narrow dirt lane. Once he was on it he had a strange feeling of returning home. He was even a little excited at the prospect of being greeted, welcomed back. Then he saw one of the Brothers plodding along the road ahead of him. He honked the horn as he came alongside.

  It was Brother Crown of Thorns, who had driven him to San Felice the previous morning.

  “One good lift deserves another,” Quinn said, leaning across the seat to open the door. “Get in, Brother.”

  Brother Crown stood rigid, his arms folded inside his robe. “We been expecting you, Mr. Quinn.”

  “Good.”

  “Not good, not good at all.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Pull your car off the road and leave it here,” Brother Crown said shortly. “I got orders to take you to the Master.”

  “Good.” Quinn parked the car and got out. “Or isn’t that good, either?”

  “A stranger snooping around inside the Tower is tempting the devil to destroy us all, but the Master says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Where is Sister Blessing?”

  “In torment for her sins.”

  “Just what does that mean, Brother?”

  “Money is the source of all evil.” Brother Crown turned, spat on the ground, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before adding, “Amen.”

  “Amen. But we weren’t talking about money.”

  “You were. Yesterday morning. I heard you say to her, ‘About the money . . .’ I heard it and I had to tell the Master. It is one of our rules, the Master’s got to know everything so’s he can protect us against ourselves.”

  “Where is Sister Blessing?” Quinn repeated.

  Brother Crown merely shook his head and started walking up the dusty road. After a moment’s hesitation Quinn fol­lowed him. They passed the communal dining hall, the storage shed where Quinn had spent the night, and a couple of small buildings which he hadn’t seen before. Fifty yards beyond the path rose sharply, and the steepness of the ascent and the unaccustomed altitude made Quinn breathe heavily and rapidly.

  Brother Crown paused for a minute and looked back at him with contempt. “Soft living. Weak constitution. Flabby muscles.”

  “My tongue’s not flabby, though,” Quinn said. “I don’t tattle to the teacher.”

  “The Master’s got to be told everything,” Brother Crown said, flushing. “I acted for Sister Blessing’s own good. We got to be saved from ourselves and the devil that’s in us. We all carry a devil around inside us gnawing our innards.”

  “So that’s it. I thought my liver was acting up again.”

  “Have your jokes. Laugh on earth, weep through eternity.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “Buy,” Brother Crown said. “Money. Hell-words leading to everlasting damnation. Take off your shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “This here’s consecrated ground.”

  In a clearing, on top of the hill, the Tower rose five stories into the sky. It was made of glass and redwood in the shape of a pentagon surrounding an inner court.

  Quinn left his shoes outside the entrance arch which bore an engraved inscription: the kingdom of heaven is waiting for all true believers, repent and rejoice. From the inner court scrubbed wooden steps with a rope guardrail led up the five levels of the Tower.

  “You’re supposed to go up alone,” Brother Crown said.

  “Why?”

  “When the Master gives an order or makes a suggestion, it don’t pay to ask why.”

  Quinn started up the stairs. At each level heavy oak doors led into what he decided must be the living quarters of the cultists. There were no windows opening onto the court ex­cept at the fifth level. Here Quinn found the door open.

  A deep, resonant voice said, “Come in. Please close the door behind you, I feel a draft.”

  Quinn went inside, and in that first instant he realized why the Tower had been built there in the wilderness and why the old lady whose money had built it felt that she was getting closer to heaven. The expanse of light and sky was almost too much for the eye to take in. Windows on all five sides re­vealed mountains beyond mountains, and three thousand feet below lay a blue lake in a green valley like a diamond on a leaf.

  The scenery was so overpowering that the people in the room seemed of no importance. There were two of them, a man and a woman wearing identical whire wool robes loosely belted with scarlet satin. The woman was very old. Her body had shriveled with the years until it was no larger than a little girl’s, and her face was as creased and brown as a walnut. She sat on a bench looking up at the sky as if she expected it to open for her.

  The man could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. He had a gaunt, intelligent face, and eyes that burned like phosphorus at room temperature. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he was working on a small hand loom.

  “I am the Master,” he said easily and without self-conscious­ness. “This is Mother Pureza. We bid you welcome and wish you well.”

  “Buena acogida,” the woman said as if she were translating the words to a fourth person present who couldn’t understand English. “Salud.”

  “We bear you no malice.”

  “No estamos malicios.”

  “Mother Pureza, it is not necessary for you to translate for Mr. Quinn.”

  The woman turned and gave him a stubborn look. “I like to hear my native tongue.”

  “And so do I, at the proper time and place. Now if you will kindly excuse us, Mr. Quinn and I have some matters to dis­cuss.”

  “I want to stay and listen,” she said querulously. “It gets lonely waiting all by myself for the doors of the Kingdom to open and receive me.”

  “God is always with you, Mother Pureza.”

  “I wish He’d say something. I get so lonely, waiting, watch­ing. . . . Who is that young man? Why is he here in my Tower?”

  “Mr. Quinn has come to see Sister Blessing.”

  “Oh, oh, oh, he can’t do that!”

  “That is what I must explain to him, in private.” The Mas­ter put a firm hand on her elbow and guided her to the steps. “Be careful going down, Pureza. It is a long fall to the inner court.”

  “Tell the young man that if he wants to visit my Tower he must wait for an engraved invitation from my secretary, Capirote. Send for Capirote immediately.”

  “Capirote isn’t here, Pureza. That was a long time ago. Now take hold of the guardrail and walk slowly.”

  The Master closed the door quietly and returned to his position at the loom.

  “Her Tower?” Quinn said.

  “She commissioned it to be constructed. Now it belongs to us all. There is no private property in our community unless someone commits a material sin like our poor Sister Blessing.” He held up one hand in a silencing gesture. “Please make no denials, Mr. Quinn. Sister Blessing has confessed in full and is repenting in full.”

  “I want to see her. Where is she?”

  “What you want doesn’t carry much weight with us. When you trespassed upon our property, you were, in a sense, enter­ing another country with a different constitution, a different set of laws.”
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  “I gather it’s still part of the Union,” Quinn said. “Or is it?”

  “There has been no formal secession, that is true. But we do not accept as law what we do not believe to be right.”

  “By ‘we’ you mean ‘I,’ don’t you?”

  “I have been chosen to receive revelations and visions be­yond the others. However, I am only an instrument of the divine will, a mere servant among its other servants.... I can see I am not convincing you.”

  “No.” Quinn wondered what the man had been in real life besides a failure. “You wanted to talk to me. What about?”

  “Money.”

  “I thought that was a dirty word around here.”

  “It is sometimes necessary to use dirty words to describe dirty transactions, such as accepting a large sum of money from a woman for performing a very small service.” He touched his forehead with his right hand while his left pointed to the sky. “You see, I know everything.”

  “You didn’t get it in a vision,” Quinn said. “And accepting a large sum of money from a woman doesn’t seem to have bothered you much. This place wasn’t built with green stamps.”

  “Hold your vicious tongue, Mr. Quinn, and I shall hold my temper, which can be equally vicious, I assure you. Mother Pureza is my wife, dedicated to my work, sharing my visions of the glory that awaits us. Oh, the glory, oh, if you could see the glory, you would understand why we are all here.” The Master’s face underwent an abrupt, unexplained change. The visionary suddenly became the realist. “You wish to make your report to Sister Blessing about the man O’Gorman?”

  “I not only wish to, I intend to.”

  “That will be impossible. She is in isolation, renewing her vows of renunciation, a trivial punishment considering the magnitude of her sins, concealing money, withholding it from the common fund, trying to reestablish contact with the world she promised to leave behind her. These are grave infractions of our laws. She could have been banished from our midst entirely but the Lord told me in a vision to spare her.”

  The Lord, Quinn thought, plus a little common sense. Sis­ter Blessing’s too useful to banish. There wouldn’t be anybody left to keep the rest of them healthy while waiting to die.