The Unsuspected (21 page)

"Sorry, miss. Don't think I can help you."

"How many drivers are there on this route?"

“Six, miss.

"Thank you."

She tried again with the next driver and the next. The fourth man sucked his lip and said, "What do you want to know for?"

"Oh, because he was going somewhere, and he never got there, and I've been wondering."

The driver said, "Maybe I got your man. A fellow that changed his mind."

"He . . . did?"

"Yeah, yesterday morning. Tall, you say?"

"Tall, dark."

"I wouldn't wanta say he was dark. I wouldn't have noticed. But there was a tall fellow in a gray coat waiting here, only he didn't get on."

"He didn't?"

"No. Just as I was pulling up, a fellow comes up behind him—friend of his, I guess. So he turns around and goes off with the other guy. Gets in his car, see? The other guy notices him and picks him up. Happens all the time. People getting a lift. That help you any?"

"He went off with a friend?" said Mathilda incredulously.

The bus driver thought she was a stunner. "Listen, miss, I only said he was a friend. How do I know? All I know is, this guy didn't get on my bus. He was waiting for the bus, see, but he don't get on, on account of this other guy?"

"Did you notice the other guy?"

"Gosh." The driver pushed at his cap. The passengers were shuffling in their seats. He couldn't chat any longer. "I dunno. Nothing special I can remember. But they got in this D.P.W. car."

"What's that?"

The door began to wheeze shut. "D.P.W.! Department of Public Works I" he shouted at her. The bus moved off.

D.P.W. D.P.W. Mathilda stood on the empty corner and looked around her. Houses here were set in fat lawns, far apart, well back from the street. Nobody was about or would have been.

Wait, there was someone across the street. A gardener doing some spring paining. She ran across. She fetched up the outer side of the hedge and the man stopped his work.

"Please, were you working here yesterday?"

"Nah."

"Oh," she said, disappointed. She turned away.

"Whatsa matter, lady?"

"I only wondered if you'd seen a certain car," she said. "But if you weren't here—"

"I was over at Number Sixty-eight," he said, and spat.

"Where?"

"Over there." His thumb showed her the neighboring lawn. I work there Thursdays. Here Fridays."

"Oh, then maybe you did see it! There was a car with D.P.W. On it. Yesterday morning."

"Yeah," he said, and spat again.

"You saw it!"

"Sure I saw it."

"Did two men get in?"

"Yeah." There was something curious and yet reserved in his glance, as if he could tell her something if she had the wit to ask, but would not offer it.

"One of the men was waiting for the bus?"

"I couldn't say about that."

"It doesn't matter. I want to know where—which way did the car go?"

He pointed.

That way?"

"Yeah"

"Did it go straight on? Did it turn?" She thought,
I'll never be able to do this. This is hopeless.
 

"Turned left on Dabney Street," he told her surprisingly.

"Oh! Oh, thank you!" She started to run, stopped, looked back. "Was there anything—anything more you noticed?"

A curtain dropped in his interested eyes. "Nah, I didn't notice anything," he said.

But she thought.
He did. There teas something about it, something queer.
 

She thanked him again and walked briskly in the direction of the Dabney Street corner. Now what to do? Now, ought she to call the police? Tell them about that car? Surely they could trace all cars so marked. Those cars must belong to the city. She ran back again.

The gardener hadn't begun to clip yet. He was just standing there, looking after her.

"One thing more," she gasped. "It was a car from this town? I mean it was the D.P.W. here?"

"Sure," he said. "That's right." He pulled his disreputable hat down and began to work his clippers very fast, moving around am shrub with the deepest concentration on his task.

Mathilda started down the street again. At Dabney Street, she turned left, as had the car with Francis in it. That is, the car she thought Francis had been in. It seemed probable that he'd been in it. At least, it was possible. She walked a few paces, out of the gardener's sight at least. And then, at a loss, she stood still.

The pavement told her nothing. How could it? The houses here were a little less aloof, a little more chummy with the street, but still— A car passed yesterday morning. What remains to tell you that it has passed or where it went, which corners, after this, it turned, which way?

She felt very small and helpless. There was no use walking along Dabney Street. No use, she thought.

There was a little boy in leggings and jacket sitting on his three-wheeled bike, watching her. He was part way up the walk of the first house around the corner. He was about three years old.

Mathilda started toward him. She would ask. She thought.
No, how silly! It's just a baby!
She stood irresolutely at the opening between hedges, the end of the walk where he was.

The door of the house beyond him opened suddenly and his mother appeared, rather suspiciously, as if she thought this strange young woman might have designs on her child. She hurried down the walk, wearing only her house dress, moving fast in the chilly

spring air.

“Gigi . . .”

Gigi kept on looking at Tyl.

"Let me see your hands." He surrendered his dirty little paws. The woman began to put her fingers into the tiny pockets of his snowsuit. She looked over her shoulder at Tyl. "Was there anything you wanted?" she inquired with a polite grimace.

"I . . ." Tyl gulped. "I did want to find out something," she said, but I don't know quite how to go about it. I was going to ask your little boy, but Tm afraid he's too little to remember."

"Remember what?"

"Just. . . whether a certain car went by yesterday morning."

"He wouldn't know," said the mother sternly.

“No, I guess he wouldn't," said Tyl. She turned away.

"You come right in and let me wash those hands," she heard the woman saying. "Where in the world ... ! You didn't get into any
more
chocolate, did you?"

"Uhuh," said Gigi.

"You didn't pick anything up and put it in your mouth
today?"
 

"Uhuh."

"You remember what Mommy told you?
Did you?"
 

"Umum."

"He doesn't know," said the woman apologetically to Tyl, who still stood uncertainly on the sidewalk. "Lord, hell pick up any old thing and it's
so dangerous.
Gigi, I
told
you to throw that paper
away.
 

The woman pulled something out of the little pocket and threw on the ground.

Gigi bawled protest.

"You
cannot
have it! You mustn't keep dirty old things other people have thrown away. How many times . . . ?"

But Mathilda was at her elbow now, breathless, demanding. "When did he find the chocolate? Was it yesterday?"

"Yes, it was," the woman said in surprise.

"Oh, thank you!" cried Mathilda. "Thank you so much! That's just what I wanted to know!"

She swooped down and picked up the bit of bright metallic paper, gaudy enough to attract a child, bright enough to see in the grass. She flattened it out with eager fingers. There was the Dutch name hidden in the pattern. It was a wrapper from one of Grandy's

chocolates!

Francis, in her room that night, had taken a handful. He'd put them in his pocket. No one on earth but Francis or Grandy could have dropped one of those candies. And there was a car that had turned on Dabney Street, that had picked up a man who had waited for a bus.

Francis! It was a trail! It was going to be a paper chase! Oh. clever Francis!

"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!" Tyl flew back down the path. The woman stood in belated curiosity.

But Tyl went off down Dabney Street with the paper in her pocket and her fingers tight on it. Oh, clever Francis! But this showed he hadn't got into that car because he wanted to. Or why drop clues?

Chapter Twenty-eight

Perhaps he bad taken it out to eat it Perhaps he had dropped it by accident. Perhaps somebody else, after all, had Dutch chocolates. But no, no, no.
At least,
she thought,
I've got to go on down Dabney Street and keep looking.
 

She kept her eyes along the curb, remembering that Francis would have been the passenger, would have been sitting on this side. Still, it was yesterday. Other children on the street might have found other candies, and how would she know? She thought of

Hansel and Gretel, of the birds that ate the crumbs and spoiled the trail home.

She came to the next corner and stopped to think it out. A car turning a corner keeps to the right. Francis sat on the right. She went around the corner to the right, searching the inside curb. Nothing. Then she thought that if the car turned left, he would be on the outside. The middle of the intersection was no good. She crossed over and searched along the curb near which Francis would have been carried had the car turned left. Nothing.

Now what to do? She saw the search branching out hopelessly. Now she had a choice of three, and each corner she would reach on each of three routes would have, in turn, a choice of three. The thing multiplied violently. It was impossible.

She went along Dabney Street, walking on down on the right side, watching the curb. He had dropped a clue, hadn't he, after they'd turned a corner? He wouldn't drop a clue at every cross street. So, at every intersection she searched, after the turns. Six blocks along, she saw a bit of burnished purple. Intact. Candy and all. Another one! The car had turned right on Enderby Street. Oh, clever Francis! Oh, clever Mathilda! She walked along jauntily, happy and pleased and excited. She knew where to look now, for sure.

She found a green wrapper twisted up, empty, on the brink of a sewer. Her lip began to bleed where she'd bitten it, thinking how near that clue had been to being lost. Head down, she plodded on. She spotted a blue one from all the way across the road. She thought,
My eyes are good. They'll last as long as the candies do.
She wondered how many there could have been in that handful. And how many more corners—

She plodded on. Ten blocks on the same street. She stopped, then, and went back in a panic. She'd missed it. Or it was gone. She came along the same ten blocks again, almost despairing. Nothing.

On the eleventh corner there was a purple one shining under a hedge. To the left, then. Yes, Francis. Eyes aching, she went on. The trail had led her into a meaner part of town, a poorer part, at least, A part where she'd never been. Not on foot. Not alone. Surely the

afternoon must be wearing along. This street seemed to have uneasy shadows. The trail had been so long. She looked at her watch. No, it was not even two o'clock.

She stopped in her tracks. Her eye just caught it. She would have been by in another second. Inside the driveway, inside the straggly border of barberry bushes, there was a little heap of five or six candies all together. Bright and gay, like Christmas, they sparkled

on the dull grass. Inside the drive. Inside the property line.

The house was a dirty white, an old frame house, respectable enough, closed looking. No sign of children here, no flowers, no outdoor life at all. A bleak porch, a tall door with old-fashioned hardware.

She made herself walk by, hiding as well as she could her sudden stop by pretending to search in her purse, as if she'd thought of something. She walked two doors beyond. Shrubs, just leafing out, hid her now. She stopped again. That was the house! In there. The thing to do was to call the police, of course. But would they come? Would they believe her? Would they be quick enough? Would they go into the house? Could she convince them there was enough to warrant going in?

She thought,
If I could only get closer.
 

She dared not go to the door and ring and make an excuse. If Francis was in there, he would not, in any case, be sitting in the front parlor to be seen by a caller. He would not answer the door, either. That wouldn't be any good.

She turned slowly back and went, instead, up the walk to the neighbor house. There was a deep shrub border between the plots. She had an idea.

The lady of the house was at home.

"I beg your pardon," Tyl said with all the charm she could muster. " I want to ask you a strange kind of favor. You see, the other day my little boy and I were coming by, and he lost his ball. His favorite ball."

"Isn't that a shame," said the woman. She had a long flat jaw, and she pulled it far down, as if she were making a face. She meant well, Mathilda realized.