Puzzle for Fiends (16 page)

She sighed. “We underestimated Grandmother. We should have taken her into our confidence to begin with. This morning when I realized that you were determined to bring on a show-down, I explained the whole situation to her. She grasped it right away. She was thrilled. She simply adored pretending she thought you were Gordy just now.” She shrugged. “Grandma’s turned out to be much more of a lawbreaking type than any of us.”

She paused, looking out of the plate glass window at the magnificent view which was blurred in the fading fight.

“You know,” she said suddenly, “this is very pleasant. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to be able to speak the truth again—the whole truth.”

Perhaps it was because I had, during the last days, become accustomed to disbelieving Mrs. Friend on principle, but there was something about the faint exaggeration of stress upon the words “
the whole truth
” that started suspicion stirring inside me again. The story they had told me was plausible, but after all, all the other lying stories they had fed me from the beginning had sounded plausible too. Was it possible that I was once again falling for a colossal bluff?

“Yes,” murmured Mrs. Friend, “there is great pleasure in telling the truth—particularly for someone like me who is not a liar by nature. “She glanced at me under her lashes. “Even though, by telling the truth, we have lost all chance, of course, of ever getting the money which I still feel is legitimately ours.”

My suspicions dispersed then because I understood what she was up to. She was faking, but for an immediate and less sinister motive. With her genius for making the best of a bad bargain, she was hoping that I might still prove a sound investment. She had been carefully softening me up with her charm. Discreetly, she had let me know that a large sum of money, as a bribe, was mine for the asking. Now she was waiting for me to say:
Don’t worry about tomorrow. I’m so crazy about you all that I’ll go ahead with the plan anyway and see the Aurora Clean Living League doesn’t walk off with your money.

When I didn’t say anything, she made a little grimace. “Tell us. Now you know the truth, do you think we’re very shameless?”

“Yes, baby.” Selena smiled up at me dazzlingly. “Are you terribly, terribly shocked?”

I suppose I should have been. After all, even if old Mr. Friend’s will had been on the whimsical side, they had all of them been unscrupulously prepared to break the law and use me as their stooge. But I wasn’t shocked. Although Mrs. Friend and Selena had between them less ethical equipment than a gnat, I felt a positive affection for them.

“I’m not shocked,” I said. “Maybe I’m a criminal type myself, which brings up the one question that really interests me. Okay. I’m not Gordy Friend. Who am I?”

Personal excitement that had nothing to do with the Friends started my nerve ends shivering. Peter… San Diego… the propellers… Iris… those dim, tantalizing clues stirred in my mind. In a second I’d be a man again with a name and a life.

Mrs. Friend put down her knitting. She looked faintly embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, dear. I’m afraid that’s one thing we can’t tell you.”

“Can’t tell me?”

“No, dear. You see, we don’t know.”

I turned to Marny who still sat curled up on the edge of the couch. It was always to Marny I turned in times of trouble.

I said: “Is she speaking the truth?”

Marny nodded slowly.

“That’s true,” she said. “We don’t know. None of us know—not even Nate. We haven’t the faintest idea who you are.”

I felt like a prisoner, almost reprieved, who sees the door of his cell slam again in his face.

“But someone must....”

“I’m afraid that’s the way it is.” Dr. Croft, who had for so long let the women hold the floor, took control at that point. He watched me from his liquid, unmasculine eyes. “When you were received at the hospital, there was absolutely no clue to identity on you, no wallet, no papers, nothing except the clothes you were wearing and they seemed to be brand new with no laundry marks.” He paused with a faint smile. “You must realize that I took a tremendous risk loaning you to the Friends the way I did. I’d never have taken that risk if you’d been someone with a name, an identity who might at any moment have been claimed by relatives.”

“But the people who brought me to the sanatorium?”

“Marny told you. They were motorists who found you lying unconscious at the side of the road. Marny suggested you were a hit-and-run victim. I think it’s more likely you were robbed. Perhaps you gave a ride to a hitchhiker who blackjacked you and stole your valuables and your car. The wound on your head’s such as might have been made by a blackjack.” Mrs. Friend gave me a sudden, sweet smile. “Don’t worry about it too much, dear. I’m sure your memory will come back soon. Meanwhile think of us as your family.”

“Yes, baby,” said Selena, rubbing her soft cheek caressingly against the back of my hand. “We simply adore you. We honestly do. We’ll adopt you.”

If I’d felt sardonic, I could have pointed out that, since they had kidnapped me, the least they could do was to house and feed me until I found somewhere else to go. But I didn’t feel sardonic. It’s lonely being a man without a name and without a past. The Friends were the only people I knew. I clung to them.

Nate Croft said: “Of course, when the right time comes, we’ll do everything we can to see that you’re restored where you belong.” He looked faintly awkward. “I must admit that while the—er—little masquerade was on, I did my best to discourage any shreds of genuine memory you showed signs of developing. Of course all that will be changed now. You can rest assured that my services as a psychiatrist are completely at your disposal.”

“Free of charge?” I asked.

He looked even more awkward. “I don’t blame you for feeling antagonism towards me, old man. As a doctor, I have acted in an unorthodox fashion. I’m the first to admit it. My only excuse is that I didn’t feel it would do you any serious harm and, believing as I do that Mr. Friend’s will was outrageously unfair, I thought you might be the means of doing the Friends a great deal of good.”

Nate was as expert as Mrs. Friend in finding the favorable interpretation for his own behavior. In that smooth speech, he had managed to make a shamelessly unethical act sound like a chivalrous attempt to aid ladies in distress.

“Which brings up quite an important point.” Nate’s hands were in his pockets now. He was rocking back and forth on his heels—his favorite bedside mannerism. “Now you’ve heard the set-up, what’s your point of view? About this will, I mean?”

His eyes flicked up to meet mine. Mrs. Friend had dropped her knitting. Selena, her cheek still against my hand, moved her head to stare up at me. Even Marny stirred on the couch.

I said: “You want to know if I approve of Mr. Friend leaving that clause in his will?”

“I mean,” said Nate Croft, “if you’d been Mrs. Friend or Selena or Marny—or me for that matter—how would you have behaved?”

I glanced down at Selena for whom Nate was “besotted with lust” and by whom I was so nearly enchanted myself. I studied Mrs. Friend’s magnificent maturity and Marny’s stripling loveliness.

I said, which was true: “If I’d been you, Nate, I’d probably have done exactly the same thing—especially if the Clean Living League’s as preposterous as they make out.”

“Oh, it is, it is,” said Mrs. Friend quickly.

“Then, in that case—” Nate was studying his own manicured thumbnail. It was a gesture intended to show casualness. In fact, it couldn’t have been more obviously thought out—“in that case, maybe, even now, you might feel like…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. There was no need. It was perfectly obvious what he was driving at.

“We would guarantee,” put in Mrs. Friend quietly, “that you’d get into no trouble. Even if the little trick was exposed, we would take the entire blame. I mean, we would swear that you were an amnesia patient whom we’d deceived into genuinely believing he was Gordy. You’d just be the innocent victim. We’re doing that for Nate too. We’re prepared to swear he never knew Gordy and honestly believed us when we claimed you.”

“At worst it’s only a technical breaking of the law,” said Nate. “If you knew how the whole Friend family had to suffer for years putting up with Mr. Friend’s impossible tyranny, you’d realize they have every moral right to the money.”

Selena jumped up. She was still holding my hand. She leaned over me, her warm red mouth drooping in a conspiratorial smile.

“Do, baby. Oh, please do. Who cares whether it’s moral or not? It’s just that it’s terrible, terrible fun to have a lot of money and awfully dreary not to have any. Think of Mimsey grilling hamburgers in a hash house and Marny a drab hotel chambermaid and me… oh, God, what would I be good for? Walking the streets, I suppose.” She looked dreamy. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so unattractive.” She glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. Friend. “Mimsey, do you think maybe it would be fun? I mean, if you could pick only the very best streets to walk?”

Mrs. Friend said: “Selena, don’t be frivolous.” She looked at me. “Well, dear?”

Perhaps an amnesiac is automatically anti-social. Or perhaps it was just because Selena was so beautiful and wasn’t lying to me any more and was married to a drunken bum who’d abandoned her at the only moment when he could have helped her. In any case, I knew exactly what I was going to say.

And I said it.

“Sure I’ll do it, provided you’ll cover me if there’s any trouble and help afterwards to find out who I am.”

“Of course we will.” Mrs. Friend’s face was radiant. “Darling boy, of course we will.”

Selena traced the curve of my cheek with her finger. “Angel, you’re such an angel. Really, having it be you who is the fairy godfather is the nicest part of it all.”

Nate Croft, now the climax was passed, had reverted to the jealous male. His dusky cheeks flushed with pink, he snapped: “Selena, don’t paw him about.”

“Why not, dear? He’s so paw-able.” Selena drifted to Nate then, kissing him absently on the cheek. “But we’re so grateful to you too. You’ve been absolutely dreamy.”

Mrs. Friend had risen and was sitting next to Marny on the couch, squeezing her hand. “Dear, please forgive me for being so unattractive and snappish. You were right. It’s just because you’re more honest than we that he’s doing this for us.”

“Okay, Mimsey.” Marney pulled her hand away impatiently. “We’ve got all that we wanted. You don’t have to coo.”

Mrs. Friend sighed. “Such a prickly child I have.” She rose again from the couch and progressing towards me picked up the volume of Mr. Friend’s poems from the floor. She returned to her own chair, searched through the book and gave a contented little grunt.

“Oh, it’s so much nicer this way with everyone trusting each other, understanding each other.”

She patted the book. “Now, dear, you must be sure to learn the poem perfectly. Mr. Moffat is probably down on his knees right this minute praying that you’ll fumble or hiccough or do something distinctly drunken and be disqualifiable.”

She looked up. “Nate, Selena, sit down, dears. It makes me restless, everyone milling around.”

Selena and Nate sat down together on a love seat. Mrs. Friend murmured:

“Let’s see. Only two more verses. The one we read and the last one. Let’s read the last one.”

She peered, seemed to find the print too small for her and fumbled in her work-bag from which she produced a large pair of shell-rimmed glasses. She balanced them on the end of her nose.

“There.”

Emphatically, stressing the rhythm, she read:

“ ‘Oh now is the time when Temptation,

Like the serpent of yore, must be stunned.

We must flush every foot of the nation

Till our quarry is slaughtered and shunned.

Though our country is stained, pray restore her.

Up and scour her with spiritual soap.

Oh scour her and scourge her, Aurora,

Our Lady of Hope.’ ”

She put the book down on her lap. She peered at us all over her spectacles.

“Your poor father! Never tell a soul but he drank a whole glass of blackberry brandy on our wedding night.”

Magnificently she had asserted herself again. Through the force of her personality, she had turned us all into a harmless little family party cozily sitting around after a good dinner. No one would have dreamed, to look at us, that we were five desperate characters preparing a major conspiracy to break the law.

Suddenly I found myself thinking that if the Friends were this good at deception they might just as well be even better. What if I had let myself be duped again? What if they had cunningly told me only part of the truth and the little comedy in front of Mr. Moffat tomorrow was just a prologue to—something else?

I had no reason to think that way, of course. No reason at all.

And yet I could feel the prickle of gooseflesh on my skin.

“Ready, dear?” Mrs. Friend’s gentle smile had settled on me. Once again she raised her hand and beat a heavy, rather inaccurate rhythm in the air.

“
Oh now is the time when Temptation…”

When
I had the poem word perfect, Mrs. Friend announced that it was time for us all to go to bed so that we should be particularly clear-headed in the morning. Nate, obviously reluctant to leave, was led off to the door by Selena. When they had gone and Mrs. Friend had betaken herself to say goodnight to her mother, Marny offered to wheel me to my room.

I didn’t need to be wheeled, but I liked the idea of being alone with Marny for a while.

Once we reached the bedroom, she pushed my chair near to one of the silver and gold beds on which she dropped down, her black hair tumbled around her young, cute face. The indignation with which she had fought my battle for me against the family seemed to have left her. She was her cool, sardonic self again.

My groundless suspicions had almost faded but somehow I wanted to be sure that she didn’t think I was a sucker.

I smiled at her. “Well, I’ve got a lot to thank you for. If it hadn’t been for you, they’d never have broken down.”