The old man sank back deeply. He had done well; it had been a strain; he was nobody’s fool. People of goodwill. Generously, lovingly, inclined. Yes. But how it would work out—remained to be seen.
Dick said, “Hey, since I’ve got the usual on, for the morning, I’m off. Why don’t you two stick around ’til Mei comes back?” (But no longer, his look said.) “Goodnight, Daddy.” And he was gone.
The old man, in heroic courtesy, summoned his attention toward those who were left. “Well! I haven’t even heard a whole patch of it,” he said to Jean and Harry. “I haven’t heard about the yellow pig, yet.”
“Another time,” said Jean. “Then I’ll get to come back and help tell it”
“You sure will, honey.” He smiled fondly and rolled his weary head.
Harry got up. “Been a busy busy day.” He was a little stiff. Who was supposed to adore Jean Cunliffe around here?
“A doozy,” said his daddy feebly. From under a shadow.
Then Mei was back. Harry and Jean said goodnight. They went out into the upper hall. The house felt alive. It hummed in its distances. Harry could hear it, plain.
Downstairs, Dick met them. “Pat just called,” he said crisply. “Daddy’s phone is off. I took it.”
“Who called?” said Harry stupidly.
“Pat Fairchild. Tom’s wife, you idiot. Tom’s occupied. I don’t think I’ll tell this news to Daddy, tonight. Max-the-Kootz has up and died.”
“Huh?”
“Pat doesn’t know what of. She thinks he up and busted out of pure pique. Known as natural causes.”
“Maybe his heart broke,” said Harry oddly. (The man had had a child. How did Dorinda know what would hurt a father?)
“Usually does” his brother said. “Only the layman thinks something ‘attacks.’ By the way, Pat thinks Tom is the greatest speechmaker since Abraham Lincoln. She’s mad as hell at some dame who wanted to know ‘Yes, but why couldn’t Tom have postponed the execution?’ as if he hadn’t said. Poor old Tom is going to have to put up with a latterday Mary Todd, I’m afraid.”
“How is Daddy?” Harry said.
Dick didn’t answer, at once.
So Jean said, very low, just making thought audible. “Dorinda and those men. So horrible. And waiting for the other man to be killed. He can’t enjoy that. Just can’t.” (This was the shadow.)
Dick said, “Should I tell him, now?” He said this with fond respect and Harry blinked.
“Oh” said Jean, swallowing, “I don’t know. But at least it’s over.” She sighed. “Done is done. That’s what your daddy is going to say.” She was saying it, herself. Done is done. That is that. It’s over.
“I’ll talk to Mei,” said Dick. “I’ll see. As for how he is—Listen, once he’s rested, I wouldn’t be surprised if our daddy took a notion to live forever. Hell want to see how his little girl turns out.”
“She’s a honey,” Harry said. “Oh, she’s a honey.”
“Makes you stop and think, eh?” said Dick. “Goodnight, Jean honey.”
Harry took Jean out to the familiar car.
“Home? Right?” he said carelessly.
“Why, sure,” she said, as carelessly as he.
She hoped she hadn’t been too forward, just now. Never mind. She could love anybody she felt like loving. Although, perhaps, best quietly. Much—remained to be seen.
So she mused and mulled in silence, over this long and busy day, over the four days and the thousand years of this adventure, until she noticed that the car was diving down into Harry’s subterranean garage.
“Hey!”
“Come on,” he growled. “Bonzer is fit to be tied, and you know it. Incarcerated, from four to six this afternoon, in some police station, waiting to give red-tape-type testimony in the matter of his file being stolen. He feels he failed us. You’ve got to help comfort him.”
“Oh?” she said.
“Listen, he’s been marketing and laid in candied canaries’ tongues, I expect.”
“I’m fond of Bonzer, too,” she said demurely. But now her heart was pounding. It couldn’t help it.
So they went up in the familiar elevator, where Harry said to its ceiling, “Occurs to me I may not be the hero of this saga. For a while there, I figured I was getting on to it. Climbing down cliffs, with raging beast below.”
“I didn’t do any good, either,” she said. “After all that trouble and strife, they just chained me to a washtub.”
He looked down at her. She never said what he expected. Ninety-nine percent of the girls in the world would have bolstered up his male ego, after that lead-in. But she didn’t seem to think he needed bolstering. Could take his lumps. Was a man. The subtlest compliment of all?
They had landed. “Me, too,” he said meekly, and opened the door to the familiar landing, the small windowless cube, before his familiar door.
Harry put on his worried-cherub look. (As a matter of fact, his heart was pounding.) “Well, maybe we weren’t the heroes, exactly, it not being our forte. But even so, you know what is done.”
“Yes” she said. “We are supposed to get married.”
Then she was in his arms and nonverbal communication was going on.
But Jean began to struggle fiercely; she pulled away.
She said breathlessly, “Harry, if you want to take me to your other place, let’s go. But it’s only fair to tell you …”
(Oh, what a fool I am! The thing is to GET him. What am I doing? Why can’t I be devious, like everybody else? Oh what a fool!)
“I am not going to marry you,” she said, “except for keeps and children.”
(Oh, now she was terrified.)
“Which I would be glad to do,” she said nervously, “if you’ll—say the word.”
Harry Fairchild couldn’t think of a word to say. Especially since Bonzer, having sensed their presence, had now opened the door and was calmly expecting his gentleman, and the lady guest, to enter with decorum, and partake of genteel refreshments.
What word could Harry say? How could he say that “for keeps and children” was exactly what he had had in his enlightened mind. Among other things! One million other things! All that wasn’t going in a word.
Ah, deviosity to the rescue!
Wordlessly, Harry picked up Jean Cunliffe and carried her, in ancient symbolism, across his threshold, and put her in her own place.
Everybody took his meaning, immediately. Jean, with all her heart rejoicing, Bonzer with pleasure, although not (of course) surprise.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1966 by Charlotte Armstrong
copyright renewed 1994 by Jeremy B. Lewi, Peter A. Lewi, and Jacquelin Lewi Bynagta
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