by Helen McCloy
“Do they?” As he couldn’t take his eyes off the road, he tried to put the smile into his voice. “When a thing is so elusive that you can’t determine its velocity and position at the same time—”
“Basil! A side road!”
The headlights picked out a narrow, winding track that tunneled into the woods on their right.
“Thank God!” He turned the car into what must be a leafy lane in summer.
“But we don’t know where it goes!”
“I don’t care where it goes, so long as we get away from those cliffs. If we skid here, the worst thing that can happen is that we wrap the car around a tree. At this speed it won’t hurt us—only the car.”
“I thought some of the worst accidents occurred at low speeds.”
“This isn’t a speed. It’s a slow. We’re crawling.”
They were on relatively level ground here. They rounded one curve and another and another. “Have you any idea where we are?” Gisela asked him at last.
“Not the faintest. We’ll have to stop at the first house and ask for directions.”
“But there don’t seem to be any houses on this road.”
“There must be. A road has to lead somewhere. People don’t build them just for fun.”
“Perhaps we’re passing houses without seeing them because they have no lights.”
“At eight o’clock in the evening? Even in the mountains people don’t go to bed that early. Not since the invention of television.”
“What about summer cottages, closed for the winter?”
“Would the county build a whole road just for summer cottages?”
“It may be a private road, a dead end.”
“If it is and all the houses are closed, we’ll just have to turn back. But let’s hope we come to a house or another road in a few more minutes.”
He knew vaguely that they must be on top of the mountain now where it leveled off into a sort of plateau furrowed with shallow valleys and ravines, but after so many twists and turns, he had lost all sense of direction. If only there had been stars! He felt as lost as a child playing blindman’s buff.
The snow was deeper now. There was a theory that you should drive in high gear on deep snow, but the way was growing so steep again that he decided to shift into second. A mistake. There was an ominous clonk and the engine died. He turned the ignition to “start.” The engine muttered with just the sound of a human voice swearing under its breath, so you couldn’t quite catch the words. He stepped on the gas. The engine went on muttering, but the car didn’t move. He tried again. The muttering was slower. It died and silence enfolded them.
He looked at his wife. “Transmission, probably. Job for a garage. Several days and at least a hundred dollars. Were you joking about putting on our skis? It’s not a joke now. We must ski or walk.”
They were dressed for the weather—insulated underwear, heavy ski sweaters, wool slacks and fur-lined parkas. They got into ski boots and adjusted skis by the light of the headlamps. He glanced at Gisela before he switched off the lights. In those clothes she looked like a boy until you noticed the fine cut of her profile and something essentially feminine in the depth of her dark eyes.
“You and I have been in worse situations than this,” he reminded her.
“I know.” They exchanged the most intimate of all smiles, the smile of shared memory. “I suppose we should keep to the road. As you said, a road has to lead somewhere.”
“Except in dreams.”
“But this isn’t a dream. It’s reality. Remember?”
“Is it? I’m not so sure . . . Look! Lights. I don’t quite believe in them, do you? Too pat. A moment ago we were miles from anywhere.”
They had glided downhill and around the next curve. Now they were standing at the top of another hill. Below them, on the floor of a wide valley, stood a house with brilliantly lighted windows.
“How beautiful!” Gisela breathed softly. “Like coming suddenly on a lighted ship at sea.”
“Or a Japanese house.”
“Because it’s broad and low and sitting among terraces and gardens with trees just beyond?”
“Partly, but it’s more the way the roof is shaped and placed in relation to the low lines of the house. Somehow those lighted windows look like chosi screens, and the whole thing seems frail and impermanent.”
“To me it looks more like a toy Noah’s ark, a boat on a platform.”
“But the roof is almost Chinese. You expect the corners to curve up and then they don’t.”
“An odd house.”
“And, therefore, an old house. Today builders use standard blueprints and houses look alike.”
“I wonder what kind of people live there?”
“Let’s find out.”
As they drew nearer, it seemed less odd and Oriental, but it was certainly old. No picture windows. Casements with leaded, glass panes. And the level spaces muffled in snow weren’t terraces. They were verandas without roofs.
“I think there are steps under the snow—” Basil turned his head as he spoke to her, but she wasn’t there.
“Gisela!”
“I’m all right.” She had fallen into a drift; only her head and shoulders rose above it. “All but my ankle. It turned right over.”
“Try to stand.” He helped her into an upright position. She leaned on him heavily. “Will it bear weight?”
“Not comfortably. Probably a sprain.”
He unlaced the ski boot. His knowledgeable fingertips explored the ankle. “I suspect something more serious. Probably an inversion fracture.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not really, but you mustn’t walk much until I can get you into a cast.”
“But I have to walk! At least to the house.”
“No, you don’t. Wait here a few moments.”
He groped his way through the snow to the veranda steps alone. He could hear a murmur of voices from inside the house. There was no bell beside the front door, but there was a knocker of wrought iron. “It would be brass on a new house,” he thought as he knocked.
The murmur of voices stopped and he heard footsteps. He had been standing away from the windows in darkness. Now he was suddenly bathed in the glare of two carriage lamps on either side of the front door. They made everything look like a scene on the stage: snow falling through spotlights; one magnificent tree in the foreground, its trunk of dark, wet-looking papier-maché, stippled with paint that looked like pale, lacy lichen; beyond, a suggestion of tall pine trunks rising into a shadowy confusion of branches far above. Whoever painted that backdrop was truly an artist.
Half the wide door was swinging open, like a casement window. It was a New York Dutch door, derived, perhaps, from the European barn door. A man faced Basil in the opening. His once-blond hair looked cream-colored now it was turning white, but his face was that of a man in his late forties. He wore a sweater almost the same color as his hair, one of those Irish fisherman’s sweaters that look as if they were ivory carved in low relief. His sun-tanned skin had a golden tone. His eyes were like china tea, tawny amber, wide-spaced under level brows. The eyes and brows made him handsome, even in middle age.
“I’m sorry to have to bother you,” said Basil. “But our car has broken down and we have no idea where we are. If we could telephone to a garage—”
The man’s laugh had the rich tone of golden bells. “Are you kidding? It’s all you can do here to get garage men out on a summer day, but on a night like this—”
Basil tightened his grip on his temper. “My wife has hurt her ankle rather badly. If there’s any sort of motel or boarding house near here—”
“There isn’t. The nearest is a good twenty miles, over by the ski lodge. You’d have to go back to Palenville to reach it by car. Tonight you could hardly take a trail over the mountain and walk!”
The thought of Gisela waiting in the snow put an edge on Basil’s voice. “My wife cannot walk. Her ankle is broken. If we could borrow
a car from you . . .”
The amber eyes went beyond Basil to the snow, still falling steadily. “You’d get stuck long before you reached Palenville.”
“Francis! There’s only one thing to do. They must spend the night here.”
A woman had come to stand beyond the man’s shoulder. She was tall and slender and blonde. The bone structure of her face had the symmetry of classical Hellenic sculpture and was as sexless. Take away Aphrodite’s breasts and chignon and she is Hermes. She seems to derive as obviously from boy models as Shakespeare’s heroines from boy actors. She has the wide waist, narrow pelvis and flat buttocks of a young male athlete. Her straight nose, round, beardless chin and sensual mouth are common to statues of both sexes and may be artistic conventions of the period. Whatever the cause, it is an epicene convention. There is nothing about face or figure that suggests the older mother goddess of earlier images who is so very much a functioning mammalian female.
The woman who stood behind the man in the doorway was as the figures in ancient marble and as cold. Her masculine aspect was emphasized by a slack suit of gray flannel cut to perfection by some master tailor. Immaculate white linen shirt, glossy, chestnut loafers, no jewels, no make-up. Utter self-confidence was all about her like a scent in the air.
The man turned his head to look back at her. Basil caught the look. Here was one man who did not find her cold. Her husband?
His eyes came back to Basil. “I’m sorry. We have a house party here and all the bedrooms are in use. Perhaps if I drive you myself—”
“A car will get stuck tonight no matter who’s driving!” The woman’s voice was beautiful, too. Low pitch, clean enunciation, and richly various tones suggested training. Actress? “There’s only one thing to do. We’ll ask them to camp out in the living room just for the night.”
The man turned to Basil again with forced courtesy. “I’m afraid that’s the best we can do. Where is your wife? Can I help you get her up to the house?”
“No, thanks. I can manage. And I am grateful for this.”
Basil went down the steps.
“We’re miles from a motel or a garage,” he told Gisela as he unlaced her other ski boot. “We’ll have to stay here overnight and hope to get you to a hospital the first thing in the morning. This ankle must be X-rayed.”
Something in his voice caught her attention. “Did they invite us to stay the night?”
“Not with any great enthusiasm. I doubt if the husband believed your ankle was broken, but the wife did, and she insisted. It won’t be too comfortable. A couch in the living room. They have a house party and no bedrooms are free.”
“A couch in the living room sounds wonderful.”
He slid one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders, and rose. She clung to his neck. “Quite sure I’m not getting too heavy for this sort of thing?”
“Not you! You haven’t gained an ounce in twenty years.”
The man held the door open for them. For the first time he was smiling. “Welcome to Crow’s Flight! I must have seemed inhospitable just now, but we are a bit crowded this weekend. By the way, I’m Francis Swayne and this is my wife Folly.”
Aphrodite smiled her marble smile.
Basil had a swift impression of a wide, tall room, paneled in unpainted wood, and a great, stone chimney. He put Gisela down gently on a sofa before a broad, open hearth. There was a fire. Its flicker kept shadows moving in the far corners of the room.
There were Christmas decorations everywhere—mistletoe overhead, a blue spruce tree glowing with blue lights, della Robbia wreaths that mingled winter fruit with evergreen branches and his own favorite—angel chimes from Sweden. The vanes of thin brass were highly polished, the candles below, whose updraft would send them spinning, were waiting to be lighted, and the little brass cherubs, that would revolve and strike thin notes from the chimes with slender rods, were poised and ready.
For a moment Basil thought that the bird cage shaped like a pagoda and painted white was part of the Christmas scene, but there was a flash of turquoise and white in the cage and a harsh voice spoke in grotesque parody of the human voice, breaking words up into syllables and running all syllables together.
“My-wife-Fol-ly!”
“Oh, be quiet, Tobermory!”
Gisela smiled. “Is he really like the cat in Saki’s story?”
“No, he’s just an echo. He has no idea of the meaning of what he says, though there are disconcerting moments when he seems to. That’s why we named him Tobermory, of course.”
“Francis Swayne . . .” Basil repeated. “The novelist?”
“I write novels.” The tone implied: And I don’t like to talk about them.
It was an attitude Basil had met in other writers and this time it was a relief, for he had never read a Swayne novel. Swayne was one of those novelists who had come out of the Pacific theatre of war and mined the rich vein of Far Eastern violence and mysticism for years afterward. Possibly Basil had avoided the novels because he had been in the Pacific theatre himself and preferred to keep his own vision of the Far East intact. Now that he saw the unusual qualities in Swayne’s face, he was a little sorry he had done so.
“And this is a neighbor of ours,” went on Swayne. “Ivan Radanine.”
A boy had come forward to stand beside the Swaynes, a dark boy with a face as sharp as a knife. He was dressed for outdoors in thick boots and slacks and parka, but the heavy clothes did not clog his swift grace.
“My name is Basil Willing and this is my wife.”
“How do you do, Dr. Willing?” The boy showed all his teeth in a wolfish grin.
Now how did he know that I was Dr. Willing?
“I’m sorry I have to go just as you arrive,” went on the boy. “But I hope I may see you tomorrow.”
“Not staying for dinner, Vanya?” Swayne seemed surprised.
“Thank you, but Mother insists I spend at least one evening a week at home, and this is it. Good night, Mrs. Swayne . . . Dr. Willing.”
A chilly blast came from the open door as he went out. Before it closed, Basil saw his own tracks in the snow filling rapidly with the falling flakes.
He turned back to Swayne. “I really can’t thank you enough for putting us up. It’s no night to be out in the mountains with a broken ankle and a balky car.”
“Not at all. I’m just sorry we don’t have an empty bedroom to offer you.”
He checked himself suddenly as he saw another, older woman standing in the doorway to the right of the fireplace. Eyes still lovely looked out of the ruins of a once-lovely face. She was one of those women who always seem to be in motion—a shimmering scarf, a floating sash, a flutter of lace or pleats—and all her motions had poetry.
“Oh, Ginevra!” cried Swayne. “I didn’t realize you had come down.”
“I’ve been here for several minutes.” Ginevra’s voice was soft, lilting, almost caressing. For a moment Basil couldn’t place it and then it came to him. Irish. Not a brogue. Nothing so obvious. A cadence. Dublin University Irish.
“What are you talking about, Francis?” went on Ginevra. “You know perfectly well there’s an empty bedroom at the head of the stairs. What’s wrong with that?”
Chapter Three
LUCINDA STOOD ALONE in the upper hall at the head of the stairs. She couldn’t see the lower hall, for the broad stair turned on itself, two flights joined by two landings, but she could hear sounds from the living room below.
She heard Vanya’s demure Good night, Mrs. Swayne, and smiled. If Folly had any idea what a devil he was . . .
She heard a murmur that sounded like men’s voices and then, suddenly, a woman’s voice, soft and lilting: You know perfectly well there’s an empty bedroom at the head of the stairs . . . That was the old one. Mrs. Alcott. The one They called Ginevra. She had really put Daddy on the spot now. It would be fun to hear him wriggle out of that one, but it would be more fun to use the few minutes exploring the upper floor now that she knew Van
ya had some sort of secret hiding place here.
Vanya had gone. Daddy and Folly and Ginevra Alcott were all downstairs with these new people, the Willings. Only Mrs. Alcott’s husband was left upstairs in his room. Probably getting out of soggy slacks and damp parka and into one of the odd outfits they called après-ski. He was old and slow and the others seemed quite occupied with one another down there. She could probably count on ten minutes without interruption. Perhaps fifteen.
They may search the house, but they won’t find me . . . That’s my secret and I’m not going to tell you . . .
The words went round and round silently in the deepest recesses of her mind like shadows of the spoken words. That was the part of the mind Montaigne had described so vividly, where nothing is forbidden and everything is hidden from everyone else. Like many adolescent intellectuals, Lucinda spent most of her time in the delightful freedom of that private kingdom. It was there she had been weighing Vanya’s words ever since he uttered them.
He must have a hiding place in the house known only to him. He must have found it exploring the house during the years it stood empty.
Since he obviously believed that raps he made in this hiding place would be heard in the living room tonight, it must be close to the living room. Since he planned to come back to it secretly while they were all at dinner, it must be a place he could reach without going through the dining room and kitchen. The big living room was the only other room on the ground floor, so Vanya’s hiding place must be upstairs.
But where? All the bedrooms were occupied tonight except the one at the head of the stairs that was never occupied. He knew that and he knew it was always locked. Could he have got hold of a key? Or did he plan to hide somewhere in the upper hall?
Slowly she looked all around her. The hall was straight and wide, with hardly any furniture and no carpet, just scatter rugs. It didn’t look as if it afforded any hiding place for a boy as tall as Vanya. The only light was coming from a sconce near the head of the stairs. It left the greater part of the hall in shadow.
The walls were faced with paneling, oak or chestnut, she wasn’t sure which. It had never been painted, and now it was almost black with accumulated varnish, like an old picture in oils.
