The Balcony

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  There might have been several explanations for the presence of the little feather in the trodden snow. Again I thought of only one—that Dan Ayres had been on the grounds of Hieronomo House the night before, that he had fled with Amos in pursuit, that the feather had fluttered from his hatband just before he reached the birdhouse.

  That Dan had been the midnight marauder I had no doubt whatever. And it seemed to me that the little feather, and the tale it told, might well be used to hang Dan Ayres. I didn’t need to ask whether the small cloth bag of gold was connected with Aunt Amanda’s murder. I knew.

  But how much did Amos know? Did he realize the importance of the little feather? Should I leave it lying on the ground, pretend I hadn’t seen it and hope to come back later and find it still lying there? I dared not take the risk.

  I did the best thing I could think of at the moment. With such assurance as I could muster I leaned over and swiftly picked up the little feather. It was impossible for me to conceal my act, and I did not attempt to do so. I shoved the feather in my pocket. And then I spoke.

  “I’d better hand this to Sheriff Glick,” said I, and hoped that as an actress I sounded more convincing than Great-uncle Richard. My voice rang clattering and bright and false as my intentions. But all I had to do was satisfy Amos for the moment. I needed such a little time. A few minutes would be enough to destroy the little feather. Let Amos report my discovery then if he wished, let Sheriff Glick inquire; I could say that I had lost the feather, say a dozen things.

  The evidence would be gone. Sheriff Glick should never match that little feather to one which must still remain in the band of a soft brown hat. Of that I was determined.

  Amos’ yellow eyes had watched me steadily. I waited for argument or for objections. None was forthcoming. My own bad conscience made me doubt Amos and his intentions. His very silence became a threat.

  “I’ll probably find the Sheriff in the house,” said I. “He’ll be gone by now, Miss Anne.”

  “I—I’m sure he’s coming back.”

  “Take an old man’s advice, Miss Anne,” said Amos then. “Don’t bother the Sheriff with the little feather.” The old, tired eyes met mine. In silence Amos and I gazed at one another. We became, in that moment—the black man and I—allies of a very curious sort. For Amos knew as well as I the identity of the marauder on the grounds—he had known it when he led Sheriff Glick across the trampled snow and to the birdhouse. The moment that was endless passed, and then the Negro turned away.

  “Now, Miss Anne, if you’ll excuse me,” he said in his ordinary servant’s voice, “I’ve got my work to do.”

  I let him go. Allies should trust one another, and I did not trust Amos—nor could I fathom him. Why, if he wished to protect Dan Ayres, had he reported the flight and the pursuit and guided Sheriff Glick to the little bag of gold?

  I didn’t dare to question him. I myself had too much at stake. It had become extremely clear—Amos himself had tacitly informed me—that he knew a great deal that he hadn’t told, that he had his own secret purposes and plans. Again I couldn’t question him. Without the exchange of a single word, Amos set certain conditions, and I agreed to them.

  It was eleven in the morning when Amos and I separated. The Negro disappeared into the barn. I set out immediately for the opening in the fence. The day was Saturday and Dan would be at the village bank until noon. No detail so sensible figured in my calculations. If necessary, I would wait camped on his doorstep until Dan appeared. But I would see him. Dan’s own feelings in the matter—and I had received ample evidence of his desire to avoid all Hieronomos—did not deter me. The situation had gone beyond that point. Dan was in deadly danger, and I had to make him realize it.

  I moved toward the winter garden, a woman with a single notion, in no mood to brook interruption. I was interrupted nevertheless—and by the one person who could have halted me. In the winter garden I encountered my Cousin Glenn. Or rather, he encountered me. Joyfully he pounced upon me.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Anne. Looking everywhere.” He took my arm. “Where are you headed now?”

  It was evident that where I went, there went Glenn. I revised my campaign.

  “I was just going in the house,” said I, and hardly hoped to dispose of Glenn so easily. Nor did I. To my dismay, he stuck beside me like a burr. It developed that my cousin wanted to talk to me—and in private.

  “Can’t it wait?” I asked.

  Glenn countered with the natural question. “Why, Anne? Have you something else to do?”

  After that I meekly followed him into the library. He was maddeningly deliberate. He had to close the library door, and get me seated, and light the cigarette that I didn’t want. He couldn’t seem to settle on a spot himself. At length he perched upon the library table, and started restlessly to arrange and rearrange the pile of books.

  “I wish,” he finally began, “something definite would happen. Don’t you?”

  I did indeed. I wished that Glenn would reach his point.

  He took his time. “It seems to me,” he remarked at last, “that what we’ve gone into is the lull before the storm. Suspense is hard on the human nervous system, mine included.” He smiled a little wanly. “Didn’t you notice at breakfast how jumpy everybody was? Patience, Richard and the rest of them. Even Dad. You seem jumpy yourself, Anne.”

  “I am jumpy,” I said, and surprised him by my sharpness. I couldn’t sit there discussing the nervous condition of the household when my own nerves were stretched almost beyond endurance. What made it worse was that I had to conceal an anxiety that grew with every passing second, and to pretend that my time was at his disposal. “I thought you wanted to talk to me about something special.”

  “I did,” he replied, hurt. “But you seem so strange, Anne. What’s wrong?” His freckled face was sober, and so sympathetic that I almost wept. “Can’t I help?”

  “No,” I said. “No, you can’t. Thanks, but I’m afraid the difficulty is personal.”

  He didn’t press me. He sat scuffing at the rug. An ash had dropped from his cigarette, and he worked it into the carpet nap carefully. I couldn’t just walk away and leave him.

  “You had something else to say, Glenn.”

  “Suppose we skip it. You’ve got no time for me.”

  “Look here,” I said. “You’re pretty choosy about the kind of help you want to give. Maybe you don’t mean to make things hard for me, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  He raised startled eyes. Then a reluctant grin broke on his face. “I guess you’ve got me, Anne. Most of us want to specify the brand of help we’re willing to deliver.”

  “Well then,” said I, “now that’s settled, what is it? What’s on your mind?”

  My cousin was, in many ways, very boyish. He went to the library door and opened it abruptly and looked up and down the hall. He cautiously closed the door and came back to me. His voice became low and swift and conspiratorial. “What do you think of Uncle Richard, Anne?”

  “You don’t mean generally?” I was startled.

  Glenn shook his carroty head. “Did you notice Uncle Richard’s reaction this morning when you spoke of your brush with Eliot?”

  “He didn’t seem surprised at the state of Eliot’s health,” I said slowly.

  “Believe me, he wasn’t surprised.” Glenn leaned toward me. “Listen to this, Anne. Uncle Richard himself was roaming about downstairs last night. Dad sleeps like a log, but I don’t. It was Uncle Richard who woke me first—around one o’clock. He was in Eliot’s room from one o’clock until long after two. I heard him and Eliot talking—or rather Uncle Richard was talking and Eliot was listening. You can’t mistake those Shakespearean tones.”

  Unfortunately, Eliot’s room was some distance from the room Glenn shared with his father, and he hadn’t been able to overhear the subject of the conversation.

  “To tell the truth,” he admitted sheepishly, “I was too warm and comfortable to brave the cold n
ight air. I was curious, but not that curious. But this morning—when I heard about Eliot’s borrowing that book—I certainly cursed my indolence. That book business sounds to me exactly like Uncle Richard’s fine Italian hand.” Glenn gazed moodily at the abolitionist books and pamphlets scattered on the table. “I’m no scholar, but I’m developing quite a yen to read about Great-granddad’s Fight to Free the Slaves.”

  “We can trust Aunt Patience to get the book back from Eliot.”

  “My notion,” said Glenn, “is that Uncle Richard is busily perusing the volume now. He’s such a devious cuss. Anybody else who wanted to read a book would simply carry the book away.”

  “You don’t know,” I pointed out, “that Uncle Richard asked Eliot to creep out of bed and get that particular book.”

  Glenn shrugged. “Quite often two and two will add up to four. But I wonder what in hell either the ‘ailing’ Eliot or Uncle Richard thought they could find in a book written and printed years ago.”

  I wondered too. Suddenly, in the expansiveness of the hour, I decided to tell Glenn something that I had confided to no other member of the family.

  “Uncle Richard was in Mount Hope all day Wednesday, Glenn. He came in on the morning train—at six A.M. His arrival at the house was just a piece of playacting.”

  Glenn emitted a noiseless whistle. “Then he hasn’t got the vestige of an alibi, has he?”

  “No,” said I.

  For an instant we looked at one another, and then quickly we looked away. I dare say neither of us wanted to consider the raw and ugly speculation mirrored in the other’s eyes. It isn’t pleasant to contemplate one’s own kinsfolk in that particular fashion. Glenn cleared his throat.

  “Why don’t you tackle the old boy, Anne? Ask him if he’s got an explanation. Why don’t you ask him why he’s been so secretive?”

  “I believe,” said I, “I will.”

  My words had hardly died upon the air when the door opened, and Richard Hieronomo strolled in. He had that faculty of appearing at an inconvenient moment, and the added faculty of making me feel young, inadequate and foolish. While he was absent he would grow in my mind as a figure, gaunt and tall and sinister, but when he appeared, I always saw beneath the outward pose the aging, unsuccessful actor. Uncle Richard was acting now. Wide-eyed and elaborately casual, he glanced from Glenn to me.

  “I thought I heard someone call me.”

  Glenn shook his head, and glanced significantly at me. I looked at the floor.

  “I could have sworn,” said Great-uncle Richard thoughtfully, “I heard my own name spoken. Odd, isn’t it, how the syllables of one’s own name will catch the ear? Vanity, that great human equalizer, sharpens the hearing of the meanest of God’s creatures.”

  Uncle Richard paused expectantly. How long had he been outside the library door? How much of our conversation had he overheard?

  Glenn kept on looking at me. Now was my chance to demand explanations of Uncle Richard. I fastened my eyes upon the spotted, flowing Windsor tie. My courage leaked away. I swallowed, and I didn’t say a word.

  Great-uncle Richard watched both Glenn and me for a long, long moment. Then, with an air of studied casualness, he sauntered to the library table. From beneath his arm he produced a book—the much-discussed copy of My Fight to Free the Slaves. He laid it on the table with the others. Glenn could not repress a gasp. I may have gasped myself. Richard turned around.

  “What’s the trouble with you youngsters?”

  “We—I guess we were talking about the book,” muttered Glenn.

  “I just got it back from Eliot,” said Richard suavely. “Thought I’d ease Patience’s mind.”

  “Eliot,” said Glenn in a fierce young voice, “seems to be quite a friend of yours.”

  “He is,” replied Great-uncle Richard placidly. “He is. Not a close friend perhaps—since we travel in somewhat different orbits. But I’ve known the Frawleys for years. Between you and me, I’ll confess they make damn poor servants. It’s a pity I ever recommended the pair to Amanda. Frankly, I’ve regretted it.”

  “You—you recommended them to Aunt Amanda?”

  “I sent the pair to Mount Hope some six months ago,” said Richard. “Amanda could pay so little, and she wrote me for advice. My suggestion was the Frawleys. Incompetents, both of them, but Amanda felt she could manage that.”

  I was deflated utterly. Glenn clung to the ebbing flow of his defiance. He moved to the library table, and picked up my great-grandfather’s book.

  “I think I’ll borrow this myself,” said he, “and bone up on Great-granddad’s experiences.”

  Richard offered no objection. He looked merely bored. “I doubt you’ll find much to interest you.”

  In that respect, at least, Great-uncle Richard spoke the truth. After an exhaustive study of the flamboyant language in the volume, the highly colored tale of Great-grandfather’s aid to fleeing, runaway slaves, both Glenn and myself were compelled to admit that we found nothing much to interest us. Someone else, as I know now, had been equally disappointed. There was no cipher in the little volume, no secret message, and one would have needed to draw a long bow indeed to say that in the faded, grandiloquent words could be discovered a clue to Aunt Amanda’s violent death.

  Still in his elaborately careless fashion, the actor strolled toward the door. He paused there to deliver his exit line:

  “I hope, Anne my dear, you remember our little talk the other evening. You then agreed—if memory mistakes me not—that we Hieronomos should hang together.”

  “Not hang, I hope,” said Glenn.

  Uncle Richard kept his eyes on me. He smiled a little. “You particularly, my dear, should cling loyally to your own people. You, of all of us, may have need of loyalty in return.”

  He softly closed the door behind him.

  I was exasperated with both Uncle Richard and myself. With Uncle Richard mostly. These sinister remarks of his—in the light of what I knew of him and his activities—were profoundly irritating.

  “Exit the great actor,” I said and got up from my chair.

  It wasn’t one of my best remarks but I expected a smile from Glenn. I saw then that he wasn’t smiling, that his face was very troubled.

  “Don’t mind on my account,” said I. “I don’t take Uncle Richard seriously.”

  Suddenly, in the silent library, my voice seemed over-loud and too emphatic. But I was not afraid of Uncle Richard. What had I to fear from him? Still Glenn wasn’t smiling.

  “Anne—” said he.

  “What?”

  “Don’t underestimate Uncle Richard. He—he might do you harm. So might the family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  My question seemed to linger in the quiet air. Glenn’s face now was wretched. Abruptly, I didn’t want to hear the words he found so difficult to utter. I raised my hands as though to halt him, but it was too late.

  Glenn said, “You’ve got to listen, Anne. You’ve got to be prepared. The family knows why you leave the house so often and where you go. Every one of us knows how you feel about Dan Ayres.”

  “I see,” said I, in a voice quite unlike my own.

  “The family’s known all along. From the very first. Patience spread the news. She got it from Amanda, I think.”

  Afterwards I was to realize that Aunt Amanda must have glimpsed the first meeting at the fence. I was to recall how she had joined me in the winter garden immediately after Dan had scrambled out of sight, how incurious she had been, how undisturbed her manner. I was to recall and I was to wonder. I was to wonder why the Hieronomos, aware that I was meeting Dan, had carefully held their tongues and carefully refrained from protest. It was almost as though they had desired that I should sink ever deeper into the meshes of deceit.

  In an instant of shock the small things of the moment loom large and impressive. I was conscious of Glenn’s puzzled, unhappy eyes, of the scattered books on the table, of the ticking of the clock in the corner. It was ticking v
ery loudly.

  Glenn seemed to hear it, too, for he frowned and turned—but he turned toward the door.

  “Someone’s at the door,” said he.

  I made a protesting gesture but Glenn wasn’t quick enough. The imperative rapping ceased, the door jerked open and Wanda looked in.

  “A caller for Miss Hieronomo,” said she.

  “Miss Hieronomo is engaged,” said Glenn.

  Wanda didn’t budge. Her cheeks were pink and excited, and her eyes were dancing. She jerked her thumb toward the foyer.

  She had left the great door open for a caller who had refused to step inside. His feet were planted precisely just beyond the threshold in a fashion that was young, defiant and aggressive. But Dan Ayres’ face was very white.

  XX

  IT WAS A STRANGE MOMENT. Nothing really had been settled. Nevertheless, as I crossed the foyer, I felt curiously, unreasonably exhilarated. So must a runner feel who runs a long hard race, and arrives prematurely and at an unexpected destination. My words were banal in the extreme.

  “Won’t you come in?” I said to Dan.

  A Hieronomo spoke to an Ayres as to any other caller. The heavens didn’t fall; the lightning didn’t strike; the great white columns of the portico didn’t quiver. The sun shone on.

  Dan stood in the blazing sunlight, tall and slim and with the pale, determined face. His words were as commonplace as mine.

  “I’ve come for you, Anne. I’ve got my car.”

  Afterwards I was to wonder why I didn’t hesitate, why I didn’t remind Dan of how we had parted the afternoon before, why I didn’t produce the little feather in my pocket. But this is a truthful account. And I didn’t hesitate.

  I walked out the door exactly as I was—without a hat or coat and with my hair uncombed since breakfast. No one could stop me. The family saw me go—Glenn from the library, Uncle Richard from the drawing room, even Great-aunt Patience who, eyes starting from her head, was peering over the balustrade from the upper floor. No one raised a voice in protest.