The Case of the Weird Sisters (18 page)

"I managed to look. They are special cards with tiny raised dots in the comers. For the blind."

"Oh. Well, what about the flowers?"

"Narcissus," said Duff. "Very fragrant"

Alice sighed. "And the mirror?"

"There's always a mirror."

"Then you think she's blind?"

"It does seem so," said Duff. "That's a monstrous woman, Alice."

They were m the hall, and Art Killeen came down the stairs.

"I'm off to the post office," he said.

"With the new will?"

"Yes. Innes wants it safely away. He is going to announce what he's done, as soon as it's safe with Uncle Sam."

"I see," said Duff.

"Want to help me find the post office, Alice?"

"I can't," she said. "Mr. Duff and I . . ."

"I'd like to talk to you," said Art Killeen wistfully. "For just a minute. Do you mind if I keep her just a minute, Mr. Duff?"

Duff drifted down the hall as if something were drawing him toward the kitchen.

Alice said sharply, "I won't be long."

Duff flapped his hand at her and disappeared.

18

"I'm not going to the post office. Art. No, really. What did you want to say?"

He drew her into the sitting room with an arm across her shoulders. "I don't know how I'm going to say it, exactly," he confessed. He turned her so that she faced him. "Darling, you've put Innes in a state. Fve tried to be helpful."

"What do you mean?" Alice felt choked and angry. She wanted to reject his help, whatever it was.

"You're going to marry him, aren't you?"

"That's up to him," she said bitterly.

"He'll be all right." Killeen spoke with a soft confidence.

Alice shook herself away from him. "I don't know why you think you've got to interfere."

"Interfere? Darling, I'm not. I'm helping."

"Helping what?"

"To clear up a misunderstanding," said Killeen, "between you and Innes." She was speechless, and he went on. "Really, darling, I think you ought to be less hostile. It's costing me something."

"Oh?" said Alice.

"I'm a little jealous," he said.

Alice felt as if firecrackers were going off in the black back of her eyes, but she managed to laugh.

"You may laugh," said Art Killeen, "but you're darned sweet, Alice. I told him he was a lucky man."

"What else did you tell him?" said Alice with an effort She wasn't angry any more.

"I convinced him that you meant the opposite of what you said."

'That was clever." Her voice shook a little.

"You said you were after his dough, darling, but actions speak louder than words, as I pointed out"

"What actions?"

"You can't be after the dough, sweet Alice. You didn't want him to sign that wilL"

"But . . ."

"He sees that, now."

"Maybe I don't understand myself," said Alice. As a matter of fact, she did feel all confused.

"I understand you, darling."

Alice caught a glimpse of a scheme of things in which wheels went around within wheels, and one seemed mercenary for the purpose of seeming unmercenary, though on the next layer down . ..

"Besides that," said Killeen, "I had to convince him that you weren't in love with me."

"Did he think ... I was?"

"I'm afraid he did there for a minute."

"Wasn't that bright of Innes?" she said flatly and openly.

He chose to take it for sarcasm. "Quite a brainstorm," he said.

"As if there was any percentage," Alice heard herself saying coolly, "in that."

His eye leaped to hers. She saw him come up to the very brink of an impulse, felt the surge of recklessness that almost carried him away. She saw it fail, too, come to the brink and not go over.

"I wanted to tell you," he said lamely, "but now I'd better get down to the post office. Innes would have a fit if he could see me dawdling."

'Then don't dawdle," she said.

He came rather near. "I hope everything is going to be all right," he said, with warmth left out of the wish.

"Do you, by any chance, mean the opposite of what you say?" asked Alice.

Light leaped in his eye. He bent and kissed her and made his exit without a curtain line.

A curious mmibness took hold of Alice. She didn't seem to be able to go over that little scene and analyze it. Her mind wanted to put it off. She had, besides, a sense of having been interrupted. There was something she had been in the middle of doing. Something absorbing. Mr. Duff.

It's that Indian! she thought. What's Duff saying to that Indian, I wonder.

Through the kitchen window she saw Duff and Mr. Johnson sitting on the back steps, side by side. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. No duel this time. They gazed across the pit to the hills and distant trees. Mr. Johnson spat in the dust from time to time. Duff seemed to dream in the sun.

"I went down to the reservation yesterday," he said lazily.

Mr. Johnson grunted.

"Ever stay there?"

"Naw."

"What do you think of them?"

Mr. Johnson grinned and spat.

Duff said, "By the way, are you a Christian?''

"Sure," said Mr. Johnson. "You?"

"I am," said Duff, suppressing a sense of outrage. "Some of the Oneidas down there stick to the old religion, they tell me."

"The old man gimme a dollar."

"That so?" said Duff cautiously.

"Yeah." Mr. Johnson spat "To get baptized."

"The old man. That would be Stephen?"

"He's dead."

The dialogue seemed to have come to a dead end

"Go to school, did you?" ventured Duff.

"Sure."

"Where?"

"Here."

"How long?"

Mr. Johnson moved his shoulders. "The old man gimme a dollar to spht half a cord of wood. So I quit."

"What," said Duff rather desperately, "did you want to be?"

"Huh?"

"I mean when you were a kid." No answer. "For instance, didn't you ever want to drive the engine?"

'The train engine?" Duff nodded. "Naw," said Mr. Johnson.

"I guess you'd just as soon have a lot of money," said Duff artfully.

"What for?"

"To spend."

"Naw. I mean what for?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Wadd'ya want me to do?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Thought you had a job," said Mr. Johnson.

"Would you kill somebody if I paid you for it?"

Mr. Johnson's dark face didn't change. "Who?"

"Anybody."

"Innes, hey?"

Duff looked at him. "What makes you say that?"

134

Mr. Johnson scratched himself. "That's whatcha want to know," he stated.

Duff admitted "Yes. Well?"

"What's tlie matter with Innes?" said Mr. Johnson. "He gimme a dollar."

"Suppose somebody gave you more than that?"

Duff searched the brown face. It was expressionless. "Listen," said Mr. Johnson, "do it yourself."

Alice stifled a giggle. Duff turned and saw her. He got up and jouied her in the kitchen.

"How's the poor Indian?" she whispered.

"Lo," said Duff ruefully, "now, I think he's kidding me."

They went toward the front of the house together. Alice looked up at Duffs face and caught him with the feathers of his spirit ruffled. "Is he super-naive or is he super-subtle? Alice, he's got the Indian sign on me."

"Well, I don't believe it," said Alice stoudy. "What shall we do now?"

"Shall we beard Maud?"

"One could," giggled Alice. "But I won't be able to search her closet right under her eyes."

"No. By the way, how does one communicate with her?"

"Can you talk on your fingers?''

"No. You must be my secretary."

"Are you going to try any tricks?"

"Oh, certainly."

"All right," said Alice. "Oh, don't tell me, let me guess. It's great sport, not knowing what you're going to do next."

"Did I give you an A?" asked DufL "I should have. Forward."

Outside Maud's door, Alice said, "I don't know what we're supposed to do. She wouldn't hear a knock."

"Open it and look in," suggested Duff. "If she isn't decent, you can warn me and we'U go away."

Alice turned the knob and the door moved. She looked in almost fearfully. The room was empty.

"Nobody."

"Go ahead," said Duff. "Quick."

When they were inside Duff said, "Sit down and beginto write a note, explaining that we called, anything . . ."

Alice saw one of Maud's pads and found a pencil in her pocket. She could see, out of the comer of her eye. Duff in the closet.

"Dear Miss Maud: I brought Mr. Duff here to see you but you were out" How silly I "When you find this will you please . . .'' Please what?

"She's coming!"

Duff seemed to conjure himself across the room, so quickly was he there, standing Innocendy and rather languidly at her side.

Maud came in pell-mell The doorknob struck the wall as she flung the door open. She stopped when she saw them.

"Hello. What are you doing in here? Hey?"

Alice rose and smiled and handed her the unfinished note. She motioned toward Duff. Duff bowed. Alice felt she ought to cmtsy. It seemed a long time that they bowed and bobbed their heaxls, before Maud's eyes went down to the writing.

"Name's Duff, ehr' she said. "How ja do. Sit down if you want to. What's up?"

Duff said to Alice, "Write that I wanted to meet her because I am interested in the early history of Ogaunee."

Ahce wrote.

Meanwhile, Maud said, "I know who you are now. You're the fella that's staying down at Susan's."

She plunged herself down in a low chair beside the fireplace, imfolded a paper napkin she had in her hand, revealing a pUe of five or six pieces of Melba toast.

"Isabel says I've got to reduce," she cackled. "Can you tie that?"

Alice handed her the note.

"What do you mean, early history?" the woman demanded in a flash. "How old do you think I am?"

"I'm sorry," said Duff.

Maud guffawed. "I don't know anything about all that stuff. You ask GerL She can talk."

"He did," wrote Alice.

"Talked your ear off, I'll bet," Maud said.

She crunched into the toast Alice looked around the room for the first time. It was a mess. Things were piled around in a disorder so thorough as to seem maxl. Cardboard boxes and paper-wrapped packages, some half-opened, stood on the seats of chairs. Three pairs of shoes and an uneven number of varicolored stockings lay helter skelter under the bed on a floor thick with dust The bed itself wore its spread askew, and there were four pillows.

The mantel held three cracker boxes, unclosed, an empty Coca-Cola botde and an imwa&hed glass. The grate was full of trash, mcluding orange peel dry and stiff with age. The ruffled curtains at the windows were fairly clean, but the tie-back was gone from one of them and it sagged from the rod. Its ruffle drooped. A pint milk bottle stood on another sill, and the comic section of an old newspaper had been stuffed haphazardly in the crack at the side of the lower pane.

An apple core lay near a dirty hairbrush on the dresser, and hairpins mixed with face powder in the pin tray. Alice shuddered. Sound, she thought. Something to hear. She looked for an alarm clock. There was a clock on the dresser, but it had no hand to set for any alarm. No phonograph here. A pile of magazines, three novels with a pair of lovers embracing each other on each jacket, pictures. A calendar print of "The Horsefair" with a mustache penciled on one of the horses! The mirror was smudged and streaked and reflected crookedly, as if the composition of the glass was muddled.

Meanwhile, Maud hooked with her toe a footstool with a tapestry cover that was frayed and soiled, and put her feet up on it. She was watching them rather maliciously. Alice bit her Up. The atmosphere in this room reeked of Maud.

"Write," said Duff, "that you thought you heard somebody in the house last night. Ask if tiiere's room for me to stay here. Say you think there ought to be another mail."

Alice wrote.

Maud spoke. She knew perfectly well that something was being prepared for her to consider, but she chose to speak and upset the order of communications. "What do you want to know about early history?"

Now Alice's note was irrelevant. "This is the devil of an interview," said Duff. "Show it to her."

"No room," croaked Maud, having read. "What do you mean, another man? There's three abeady. If you count Innes. Two and a half, say." She roared.

Alice looked helpless. Maud stopped laughing and took another piece of Melba toast.

"She won't take the bait, will she?" said Duff without moving his lips much, though his voice was clear and penetrating. "Stubborn old owl, I'd say."

Maud chewed on.

Duff's voice dropped to a near whisper. "Shall we tell her?"

"What?" whispered Alice.

Maud's finger investigated a tooth.

"About the telephone call in the night," Duff said very quiedy.

Maud's light-colored eyes rested vacantly on the wall.

"I don't know." Alice tried to think up some embroidery of her own. "Do you think it's safe?"

Duff said, "Write and ask her if she knows anything about what happened last night."

Maud said, in the middle of his last word, "Say, nobody was in this house last night, were they?"

"Write, yes, you think so. Write that Innes thinks so."

Maud snorted as she read. "Innes is a fraidy cat, always was. Jump at his shadow."

Alice wrote, "Did you see or hear anything?"

"Well, I was reading a book. Ehdn't see anything. Can't hear, you know. Rained, though, didn't it? Lemme see. Isabel went through."

"Isabel!" Duff looked at a door m the far wall. "That communicates with Isabel's room?"

"It must, I guess," said Alice. "We didn't know that, did we?"

"I must have the time. Isabel was the last one to be out of her room. She answered the phone. Ask her the time."

"The time? But Gertrude says she went upstairs right after being in to see her, so we know the time, don't we?"

"Do we?" said Duff.

"Of course. If Susan knows what time she called up."

"She says she called about eleven."