Now it was Mr. Shaw’s turn to blush.
“Honestly, Daddy, I know how you feel. Really I do. I suppose it’s natural to feel that way for a year or so, but not forever.”
“Well,” he said with an embarrassed laugh. “I guess I stand corrected … May I ask what brought all this up?”
“I just want to have a Mama again, that’s all.”
“Just any Mama?”
“No — o — o, not exactly.”
“Aha!” he teased, “I thought not. I know that look in your eye! I’ll bet you’ve got a candidate all picked out, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she giggled. “That’s why we’re going up in the elevator — you promised, now!”
“Oh? Someone on the seventh floor?”
“No — Mrs. Walker.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Walker. The lady I’ve been telling you about.”
Mr. Shaw leaned back and closed his eyes. “Now wait a minute,” he said faintly. “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. This dream of yours seems so real that you are not only proposing to take me into it, you are also proposing that I should get married in it? Is that it?”
“That’s it,” she said cheerfully. “Now please don’t look at me that way, Daddy, the idea will seem perfectly sensible as soon as you get used to it.”
Mr. Shaw rubbed his face and groaned.
“Well, I can’t make you believe me,” she sighed; “you’ll just have to see for yourself. It’ll be simple. We’ll go up late at night, and sneak out of the house, and spend the night in the stable. Vicky’s going to smuggle blankets and pillows out there for us, and Bobbie’ll see that we have something to eat. And then next morning we’ll just stroll up to the Hollister’s and ask for room and board. You can tell them that you’re vacationing and that some friend recommended the country hereabouts, and that you’ve already sent the trap back to the — well, I’ll coach you in all that. Then I’ll pretend to make Vicky’s acquaintance — of course she wants to see you before she gives her final approval, but that’s nothing to worry about. And then we’ll introduce you to Mrs. Walker, and then — well, then the inevitable will happen. You don’t have to worry about a thing, Daddy, you are awfully handsome, you know. And you’ll be rich, too!”
“Incredible,” Mr. Shaw said. “Incredible.”
“Well, aren’t you going to thank me? I’m giving up my career for you!”
“Your what?”
“My stage career. I’m sure I won’t be able to go on the stage when we’re there. It wasn’t respectable in those days, was it? I think I read something about it once. I’m just teasing, though. Really I’m being very selfish. I want to live in a big house, and I want to live out in the country where it’s so quiet and pretty, with birds singing and all those stars at night and room for everybody and sweet-smelling air. I want to wear long dresses that go swish, when I grow up, and big flowery hats. I want a brother and a sister to play with and fight with and have secrets with. And most of all I want a Mama like Mrs. Walker — I want her, I mean. Daddy, she’s so beautiful you won’t believe it! I only saw her once, and I love her as much as I love you, only in a different way, of course. And she’s good, and — I don’t know. I want to be like her when I grow up … Look, here’s a picture of her. It doesn’t really do her justice, but it gives you some idea.”
She gave Victoria’s locket to her father.
“And you know, Daddy, if the inevitable isn’t — well, inevitable, we can always come back. But if we do come back it’ll be for always, because this is the last trip I’m allowed.”
There was a long silence while he studied the picture. “That,” he said at last, “is a lovely woman. Where did you get this, Susie?”
She could see that there was no use insisting on the truth of the matter. “Oh, never mind,” she sighed. “You don’t have to believe me, Daddy, it doesn’t really matter. The main thing is going up the elevator, that’s all I really care about right now. You did promise me that.”
“Yes.”
“Tonight?” she insisted.
“Yes, tonight.”
“Good! Let’s have some breakfast, and then I want to go out and buy a diary like Vicky’s. Oh, I almost forgot! We’ll have to get you a costume.”
“A what?”
“A nineteenth century suit. Now don’t look like that, Daddy, I’ll get it with my own money.”
“But whatever for?”
“To wear when we go up the elevator.”
“Now wait a minute!” Mr. Shaw said, slapping his knee. “This is too much! I promised I’d go up the elevator with you, and I will. But I will not make a fool of myself by getting into fancy dress to do it!”
“But, Daddy—”
“No!”
“But, Daddy, you can’t go into the nineteenth century with twentieth century clothes on! It’ll spoil everything!”
“We’re not going to the nineteenth century!”
“Well, then, do it — just to humor me.”
“Oh, Susie, don’t cry — I can’t stand it! All right, all right, all right — on one condition.”
“What?”
“You’ll have to promise me that the minute we come back from this — this masquerade, you’ll come with me to see a doctor.”
“You mean a psychiatrist, don’t you?”
“No use pussyfooting with you, is there?” he said wanly. “Yes, I mean a psychiatrist.”
“All right,” she said, smiling again. “If we come back I’ll go see anyone you want. I’ll cooperate one hundred percent. You can even make the appointment now, if you want.”
He looked so relieved and hopeful that her heart went out to him. “Poor Daddy,” she murmured, kissing him. “You’re in for an awful shock, I’m afraid. But you’re going to love it when you get used to it.”
15. An Old Photograph
I heard Susan’s story from Mrs. Clutchett that afternoon. In retelling it I have supplied many details, but have changed nothing essential. Mrs. Clutchett heard the whole thing by simply and frankly eavesdropping. The good woman had thought herself entitled to some explanation, after having stayed by Mr. Shaw’s side night and day since Wednesday; so as soon as she had shut the bedroom door on Susan and Mr. Shaw, she knelt down and applied herself to the keyhole. Like a tape recorder, her ear had soaked up and permanently stored everything Susan had said; and, again like a tape recorder, she faithfully relayed it all to me.
She didn’t believe a word of it.
“1881!” she snorted. “Did you ever hear such raving nonsense in your life? Now, the minute I saw that poor child step out of the elevator this morning, I said to myself, ‘Well! If ever I’ve seen hysteria, this is it.’ Oh, that smile of hers didn’t fool me for a minute. I’ve seen shock before, that’s just the way it takes people sometimes. Why, poor Mr. Clutchett was hit on the head once by a boxful of old magazines and went around for hours with such a smile you’d think somebody’d given him a hundred dollars; but it was just daze all the time. Now, if you ask me, that story is pure invention. What’s really bothering people always comes out in the end. All you have to do is be patient and wait, and the story behind the story comes out.”
She fixed me with a significant look and pursed her lips.
“All right,” I said, “what was the real story?”
“Asking her father to marry again!” she cried triumphantly. “What did I tell you just the other day! Did you mark my words? Wasn’t I telling you the pure gospel, believe it or not? Here that poor motherless lamb had it bottled up inside her until she had to run away and make up this fantastic story just to try to convince Mr. Shaw how important it was to her.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How about her dress? You said she was wearing an old-fashioned dress.”
“Why, that’s nothing! She was always playing these parts in plays. I saw her myself last year at the school. She was so natural up there on the stage, it took my breath away. No sir, she could get any
kind of costume she wanted at school. It was all just part of the hysteria.”
I didn’t know what to believe myself. Susan, although I’d only seen her a few times, hadn’t struck me as the hysterical sort. Still, there was plenty of evidence that she had a vivid imagination; and something might have happened to unbalance it temporarily. Her story was certainly queer enough. I wanted to hear it again from Susan herself; but I had no right to ask her to tell it, and doubtless her father’s disbelief would make her shy about discussing her experiences with a comparative stranger. The only thing to do, then, was to make what investigations I could on my own.
So as soon as Mrs. Clutchett left my apartment (with a sniff at its disorder, and a promise to set me to rights next week), I took a trip in the elevator. Not having met the old woman with the potatoes and the fly-away hat, I expected nothing of this venture — and nothing was the result of it. The elevator laboriously carried me to the seventh floor and stopped.
Next, I went down to the basement to check up on the week’s newspapers. I expected nothing to come of this, either. If Susan and Robert and Victoria had changed history — which was ridiculous on the face of it — the front pages of each and every newspaper for Wednesday would be changed, and there would be no mention of treasure; and if Susan were making the whole thing up, there would still be no mention of treasure. But the idea must have come from somewhere, so I went through Mr. Bodoni’s stack of papers to see what I could find.
MAYOR ASKS BOND ISSUE FOR WATER
was the big local news for Wednesday. There was no mention whatever of the 93rd Street playground. I did find a copy of that day’s paper with the front page torn off; but there could be more than one explanation for that.
So it was with a feeling of going on a fool’s errand that I walked up to the 93rd Street playground next Monday morning. Construction was indeed going on there. There was no playground any more, only a vast hole fenced off with boards and full of the Delta-Schirmerhorn Construction Company’s machinery. I went into the foreman’s shack. The foreman himself was seated behind a table, yelling into a telephone, while a short, stocky workman stood by with a yellow slip in his hand.
“Iron pipe!” the foreman was bellowing. “Six-inch iron pipe! All right, what’s this four-inch plastic stuff doing here? No it doesn’t. Look at the specs again, for Pete’s sake! I don’t care, get it here right now! Look, I got a whole crew of plumbers here sitting around and drawing pay for nothing. Don’t gimme that! Get that pipe here!” He slammed the phone down and growled, “What d’you want?”
“Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I was just wondering if you found anything out of the ordinary when you were bulldozing here last week.”
“Nah; dirt, stones, tree roots—usual stuff. Smatter, you lose something?”
“No, I — ah — just wondering. Thanks.”
He seized the yellow slip out of the other man’s hand, looked at it incredulously, and began screaming into the phone again. It seemed like an excellent time to get out. As I was leaving, the other man hurried out after me, calling, “Hey, Mac!”
“Yes?”
“What didja have in mind? Like finding something, maybe?”
“Oh, in a way,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “I just had an idea that maybe this ground had never been dug up before — you know.”
“Yeah? C’mere a minute.”
He beckoned me around the shack to a private spot.
“Matter a fact, I found something here last Wednesday. I’m a ’dozer operator, see? I always keep my eye open. Ya never know what the blade’s gonna turn up. Get a load of this.”
From his pocket he produced a gold coin.
It was a shock to see it — a pleasurable shock. I suddenly realized that I had wanted to believe Susan all along.
“At’s a collector’s item, betcha anything,” he gloated. “1862, it says on it. Hey, you a dealer? Wanna make me an offer?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I couldn’t even afford it at par. Thanks for showing me, anyway.” It seemed wiser not to mention that if three children had not gotten there first he would now have thousands of collector’s items instead of just one.
‘I’ll have to see Susan tonight,’ I thought. ‘She might like to know that at least one person believes her.’
When I arrived at the Shaws’ apartment that evening I found it occupied by an exasperated Detective Haugen, a tearful Mrs. Clutchett, and a bewildered Mr. Bodoni. From them I learned that Susan and Mr. Shaw had been missing ever since Saturday night.
Mr. Bodoni had been the last to see them. About ten o’clock Saturday night he had been torn away from his television set by an emergency call from a seventh-floor tenant who was having a lively time with a clogged tub drain and a ruptured hot water faucet. Having averted the flood and calmed the tenant, Mr. Bodoni decided that since his evening’s entertainment was ruined anyway he might as well turn the time to account by working his way down floor by floor, checking his mousetraps and collecting newspapers. He reported that he met the Shaws as he was coming along the third-floor hallway.
They were dressed “kinda funny.” When pressed for details, he could only state that their clothing struck him as very old-fashioned — “sorta like, well, the Gay Nineties, I guess.” Naturally he was a good deal surprised by their appearance; but after staring at them for a while as they waited for the elevator, an answer suggested itself. He grinned around his cigar and said:
“Fancy dress party, hah? Costoom party?”
Mr. Shaw muttered something indistinguishable. He had an air of acute embarrassment. Susan, on the other hand, looked radiant with happiness. She smiled at Mr. Bodoni, who remembered thinking, ‘That’s a good-looking kid. Wonder where she’s been last coupla days? Didn’t hurt her none by the looks of it.’
The elevator arrived and the Shaws got in. Susan called out, “Goodbye, Mr. Bodoni!”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Have a good time.”
It wasn’t until a few minutes later that he had second thoughts about his costume party theory. For one thing, the elevator arrow showed that the Shaws had gone straight to the seventh floor. Having just come from the seventh floor himself, he was sure that there was no party going on there. For another thing, Mr. Shaw had been carrying a large black cat, and Susan a book bound in blue leather — neither of them an appropriate object to take to a party …
“It don’t figure,” said Mr. Bodoni, noisily scratching his head. “It just don’t figure.”
“We’ll be lucky if we ever see them again,” Mrs. Clutchett sniffled. “You mark my words.”
“This checks with Bodoni’s story, anyway,” Detective Haugen said, showing me a pink slip of paper. It was a receipt from Ace Theatrical Costumers for ‘1 Victorian gent’s outfit.’ “You know anything about all this?” he asked me.
I started to tell him what I knew, but he cut me short.
“Okay, okay — I already got the girl’s story from Mrs. Clutchett here. Hysterical fantasy, that’s plain enough. She must have had some kind of traumatic shock. Or else it was a cover-up story for something else. Somebody could have scared her into telling it. Wish I could have questioned her personally, but she kept putting me off.” He pulled a small glass vial from his pocket. “Look at that—straw! The girl was shedding straw when she got out of the elevator Saturday morning. Nobody packs things in straw any more.”
“She said she was sleeping in a stable,” I volunteered promptly.
“I checked on that. The nearest stable is two and a half miles from here, over in the park. Nobody saw her there. The next nearest source of straw is the zoo. Nobody saw her there, either … Well, the laboratory boys’ll tell us where it came from. Now, do any of you know if Shaw had any enemies?”
Mr. Bodoni, Mrs. Clutchett and I shook our heads. “He looked like the kind of man who wouldn’t have an enemy in the world,” I said.
“Ahh, you can’t go by looks. It’s the quiet ones that surprise you. But he’s all ri
ght with the company he works for — no embezzlement or anything; no apparent worries … On the face of it it looks like they were trying to make a getaway. But why they would put on disguises that stick out like sore thumbs, and why they would go up the elevator —”
“Yeah,” Mr. Bodoni interrupted helpfully. “No party up there, that’s for sure.”
“—up the elevator instead of down, is more than I can figure out. Plus the fact that the girl was missing before … I don’t know. I can’t work out a theory to fit the facts.”
“Look,” I said, “why don’t you proceed on the assumption that they really did go back into the past, just as the girl claimed? That would solve everything.”
It was an interesting look they all gave me.
For all I know, Detective Haugen is still trying to work out a theory to fit the facts. You may remember (if you live in this city) that the newspapers had fun with the case for several days. You may even remember that some solemn crank wrote to the editor to state that Susan and her father had been kidnapped by the crew of a flying saucer “for experimental purposes prior to a mass invasion of the major Continents of the Earth.” Mrs. Clutchett, finding this hypothesis much more horrendous than anything she could have invented herself, seized upon it as pure gospel. In fact, she has entered into correspondence with the author of it, a retired plumber named Whipsnade; they have given up hope of ever seeing the Shaws again (as I have myself); and nothing that I or anyone else can say will shake their happy conviction that cataclysm from the skies is imminent, and that they are the first to know.
So there the matter stood until a few days ago, when a friend of mine, an officer of the local Historical Association, invited me to have a look at the Association’s new headquarters.
Someone had left the Association a large sum of money, which had been used to build a meeting room and a suite of offices. The little library-museum was a particularly pleasant room, with its leather-bound books, a genuine Colonial fireplace and mantel, exhibit cases full of pewter, and a Confederate cavalry officer’s uniform in an excellent state of preservation. But what drew my special attention was a framed sepia-toned photograph on one wall. It showed a tall narrow house, with towers, and pointed windows, and iron railings around the roof, and gingerbread work everywhere. There was a group of people on the verandah steps, and something about them caught my eye.
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