A Key To Many Doors, page 13
When she spoke her voice was muffled, almost furtive.
“I want you to come at once … No, not the house, the inn. It’s important … Don’t worry, it will be worth your while.”
*
In answer to Noah’s urgent telephone call, Peter pulled on an overcoat and boots and went out to the guesthouse when a most uncomfortable dinner was over and Cynthia had taken her departure.
Noah was already in bed and Max was straightening up the room.
“Did you get Miss Barbee to the inn?”
Max gave him an oddly unfriendly look, quickly veiled. “Yes, sir.”
“Then that’s all for tonight unless Mr. Jones wants you.” Noah shook his head. “Good night, Max.”
When the two men were alone they appraised each other carefully.
“Anything wrong?” Peter asked, shrugging out of his overcoat.
“A hell of a lot seems to be wrong,” Noah told him bluntly. “I think it’s time you put me in the picture.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play for time and don’t stall!” Noah was neither in his depressed mood nor in his irritable mood. He was coldly angry. “Twice people have prowled around this guesthouse. Why?” When Peter made no reply he said, “It seems to me that I have a right to know.”
“Unfortunately, I have no right to answer your questions.”
“But here I am — a sitting duck —”
“You’re in no danger, Noah. None in the least. The first time it happened, someone wanted to see whether you existed. The second time, this afternoon, was different. I had my own man watching to see whether anyone would check on you.”
“Why? What am I supposed to have done?”
“You,” Peter told him, “are my ostensible reason for being in Simonton. Someone didn’t believe it. But you won’t be bothered from now on. People know Dr. Ferrell has seen you and that he is handling your case. From now on, you will be accepted at face value.”
“Why do you need an excuse for spending the winter in your own house?”
Peter looked squarely at his brother-in-law. Because of the other man’s disfigurement he had been cautious in the past about causing any embarrassment by staring at him. He barely knew what Noah looked like. Now he saw that the eyes searching his were like Nancy’s, that the chin was strong and determined. Stubborn, perhaps. Up to now he had regarded him as a querulous invalid whose condition would be useful to him. Now he saw that he had a man, and a very angry man, to deal with.
“I can’t tell you that. I can only give you my word that it’s important.”
“To whom?”
“To all of us, perhaps. Have a heart, man! I’m not a free agent.”
“Whose agent?” Noah added, with a touch of his familiar irritability, “You aren’t the only one who can keep a secret if it’s that important. And God knows I’m so isolated from the human race that there is no one for me to reveal it to.” He repeated insistently, “Whose agent?”
“Uncle Sam’s,” Peter said at last.
“And what,” Noah asked, “has that girl of yours to do with Uncle Sam?”
“My girl?”
“The one Helen Ferrell told me barged in and tried to take over your house — and you. The girl who didn’t know you were married. What goes on here?”
Painfully Noah pulled himself out of the chair, balanced himself against a table. “Nancy is my sister and I’m not going to have her hurt, dispossessed in her own home after less than a week of marriage. What is this girl to you, Peter? I want a straight answer.”
“All right,” Peter capitulated wearily. “Only, for heaven’s sake, sit down before you fall down.”
Noah dropped back in his chair but his eyes never left Peter’s face. Slowly, awkwardly, Peter told him of his engagement to Cynthia; then he had been asked to do a job for the government and Cynthia refused to accompany him to Simonton, refused to marry him unless he would provide her with the glamorous honeymoon she wanted.
Then Nancy had appeared on the scene. She had overheard the whole conversation. Like a melodramatic fool, he had told Cynthia he would marry the first girl he met before he would crawl back to her. Then Nancy had come up to him, had said, had suggested — Peter broke off.
“So that’s it,” Noah said at last. “Because I refused to take any more self-sacrifice, she told me she was engaged. She did that for me. Good God! Ruined her life for a worthless brother, a mock marriage, and the humiliation of having a jeering rival at hand.”
“It’s not that bad,” Peter assured him. “Nancy and I will have the marriage annulled as soon as my job here is done. A lot depends on it, Noah. More than your pride or Nancy’s happiness or my future. A lot more than you can imagine. So far as Cynthia is concerned, I know now that she is a gold digger. She’s even turned blackmailer. But I don’t scare. We can fight this out if we work together and not if we work against each other. It’s a good fight.”
“All right,” Noah agreed reluctantly. “But I wonder if any man is capable of the total kind of sacrifice a woman can make.”
Peter shrugged. “That depends on the woman.”
“At least,” Noah suggested, “you might protect Nancy’s dignity by paying a little attention to her. That can’t interfere with your earthshaking secret.”
“I’ll remember,” Peter said guiltily. Before leaving the guesthouse he paused. “Oh, there’s one thing. Someone mentioned the strange disappearance of Carrington this afternoon and Nancy was so startled she knocked over a vase. Why?”
Noah looked at him blandly. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Women are queer.” Peter sounded disgruntled, bad-tempered. “I wouldn't have thought he was her type.”
After the door closed, Noah sat listening to Peter’s footsteps crunching over the frozen snow. A smile quirked his lips. His chest heaved. He was chuckling.
THIRTEEN
NEXT morning there was an improbably deep blue sky for February. Nancy was awakened by the rattle of covers as Helen brought in the breakfast tray and deposited it, with a sigh of relief, on the table.
“I told Mrs. Henning you aren’t my maid,” Nancy expostulated, as she reached for slippers and robe. “This waiting on me has got to stop.”
“I came,” Helen said, “because I wanted to tell you personally that I am resigning. Right now.”
Nancy looked at her in surprise. Something about Helen was different. “Where are your yellow glasses?”
“Your brother took them away.” The long, dark-lashed violet eyes looked at Nancy balefully. “He said, ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?’ He said, ‘Woman, fix yourself up!’ He made me walk and stand and sit. He — he — he —”
Nancy rocked with laughter. “Wonderful! Let him storm. He’s interested.”
“He said I was an idiot girl. He — he — he —”
“I told you he needed a challenge. He’s so used to women trying to be glamorous for him, trying to please him, that I knew you were just what would turn the trick, just what he needed.”
“He’s not what I need.”
As the telephone on her bedside table rang, Nancy reached out to answer it. “Good morning, Noah … Some what? … Why, for heaven’s sake? … Oh, all right, I’ll order them today. Special delivery … And what? … Look here, be reasonable. I can’t order the girl … Well, if she’ll come, which I doubt. But I warn you right now, she’s here with me and … She came to resign … Because you bullied her, you dope! … Well, I have an idea. Max is driving for me today. I’m taking Mrs. Hacker to look at houses … You wouldn’t know her anyhow, the wife of the local newspaper owner. So if you must have someone read to you, I’ll ask Helen. But strictly as a favor. And if she refuses, you can just spend the day alone. And serve you right.”
Nancy looked at Helen, looked away again, struggling to keep her lips straight. “I know it’s lonely out there. I’m very sorry but … What? Wait a minute … Helen says she’ll read to you for a while.”
While Nancy ate her breakfast she and Helen discussed what the latter had better read to Noah.
‘Have you had much experience reading aloud?” Nancy asked casually.
“Not a bit.”
Nancy turned away to hide a grin. “There’s The Oxford Book of English Verse” she suggested, “and that new novel everyone is talking about and nobody seems to read, and — are there any plays on the shelves there?”
Helen bent over to look at the books. "Shakespeare,” she said doubtfully, “but I don’t know —”
“Try The Taming of the Shrew. That’s gay enough.”
While Helen dubiously gathered the books together, Nancy looked through her new wardrobe. For herself she chose a wool suit of leaf green. She pulled out the heather knit dress.
“We’re the same size,” she said. “Why don’t you wear this today? The color is just pale enough to make your eyes terrific by contrast, and brown is wrong for you. It’s too drab. You need brightening up.”
Helen’s lips compressed. “You are beginning to sound like your brother.”
“You,” and Nancy laughed impishly, “ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
“I don’t know why you are doing this.” Reluctantly Helen removed the shabby, ill-fitting dress, let Nancy pull the other over her head and zip it up.
“Now,” Nancy said triumphantly, “look at yourself. You have the kind of figure any woman longs for and you go around looking —”
“Like a badly packed sack of meal,” Helen finished glumly. “That’s what Mr. Jones said.”
“Not now. And when we’ve done something about your hair —”
As she turned slowly before the triple mirror, a delighted smile hovered over Helen’s lips. She gathered up the books. “Well, I’d better get started. I hope he’s not — too cross.”
“Look here, Helen, I’d better explain. Noah was in a terrible accident. His wife was killed. He was smashed up and disfigured. Because of shock and strain he has lost his memory, at least he can’t retain things in his memory for more than a few minutes, though I hope that is just temporary. It’s an emotional thing, and there’s a good chance he will get over it. And because of all that, he can’t work at his job. So if he gets irritable there’s some reason for it. I don’t say that’s any excuse, of course. And most of that manner of his is sheer defense.”
“Defense!”
“Yes, defense,” Nancy told her quietly. “Nothing can convince Noah that he isn’t — repellent to people, so he tries to make them believe he doesn’t want them around, a kind of selfprotection.”
“Oh.”
“Tell him I’ll see him this afternoon, and I hope he’ll do his exercises. He really needs to build up his resistance. And if he’s impossible, throw a book at him.”
*
Mrs. Hacker was waiting in the lobby of the inn, her eyes sparkling. She came forward eagerly to greet Nancy.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“I’ve been looking forward to this excursion. Do you have a list?”
Mrs. Hacker pulled one out of her handbag. “There aren’t many possibilities in our price range,” she said a little doubtfully, “and some of them are old farms way out of town. But Joe says if I really like one, we can afford a second car, a small one, of course, so I could get back and forth. Naturally, we’d have to take that into account in considering the price of the house.”
She consulted the list. “The first one is right across the street, the first house on the avenue. But I don’t know. I hadn’t thought in terms of the avenue.”
“It won’t hurt to try,” Nancy said.
When Max stopped the car, Nancy cried out in protest. “Oh, no! They can’t sell this.” It was the early seventeenth-century house she had stopped to admire. “Why this should belong to the community. It must be unique.”
“It’s called the Maltby house and no one seems to have lived in it for two hundred years. No point even in going in,” Mrs. Hacker said. “It would have to be completely rebuilt inside.”
“We’ll see about this,” Nancy decided. “I have an idea.”
They went on to the houses within the village limits and extended their range out of town. They plowed through snow to examine houses with old-fashioned plumbing, kitchens so big and inefficient a woman would walk herself to death getting a meal, small bedrooms under the eaves, with little light or air.
Nancy kept up a gay flow of talk, but as the places were scratched off, one by one, Mrs. Hacker's hopefulness dwindled. Two of the houses had been attractive, except for price. The rest were beyond redemption, even by the most willing hands, except at an impossible cost for renovation.
The last address was on a dirt road on which a single lane had been cleared, but which had not been sanded. For the first time Max, who had cheerfully cleared off snow-covered steps and negotiated unlikely roads and driveways, hesitated.
“Do you have a map?” he asked.
Nancy shook her head.
“I should have brought one. Mr. Gerard has a large-scale local map at the house.”
“Is anything wrong, Max?”
“Well, this looks like a dead end to me. But if we can get in, I guess we can get out.”
A quarter of a mile farther on, they came to a white picket fence, only the tops of which showed above the snow. There were double gates, and on a post the sign, FOR SALE.
“The end of the road,” Max announced as he opened the door for them.
“Can you turn around?”
“The driveway has been cleared,” he pointed out, unlatched the gates, and started to follow them in.
“You get the car turned around,” Nancy said.
Mrs. Hacker stood still, in spite of the cold, looking at the white farmhouse, a two-story building with long windows on either side of a beautiful doorway. Behind, as with many New England farmhouses, there was a lower kitchen roof, a shed, a big stable, all attached so that men need not go out of doors in bitter weather to feed the stock.
“All that house needs,” she said, “is to be lived in. And the price — why it’s much lower than most of the others.”
“Not much call for working farms in these parts any more,” Max put in. “The soil’s too rocky.”
Nancy looked at him in surprise. This was the first time he had accompanied them to the house itself.
He answered her inquiring look. “Someone has been here,” he explained. “No one cleared that driveway just for the exercise. The place is supposed to be unoccupied. I think Mr. Gerard would expect me to go along.”
“Surely no one looking for a free night’s lodging would come this far,” Mrs. Hacker protested.
“You mean tramps?” Nancy asked with a shiver.
“Tramps don’t usually clear driveways,” Max said. He was embarrassed but determined. “If you’ll let me have that key, I’ll go first.”
Mrs. Hacker handed it to him. After several attempts he said, “This is the wrong key.”
“It can’t be. Look at the tag. That’s the one the real estate agent gave my husband.”
Max bent over. “Someone has put a new lock on the door.”
“Then we can’t get in?” Airs. Hacker could not conceal her disappointment.
Max smiled. “Not unless you want me to break a window.”
“Heavens, no. But, oh dear, it seems so perfect. All I dreamed of.”
“We’ll get the right key and come back,” Nancy told her cheerfully. “There’s always another day.”
As they drove back to Simonton, Mrs. Hacker said, “I can’t begin to express my gratitude, even if the house proves to be unsuitable. You’ve opened up a whole new future for me today.”
“I’m glad,” Nancy said simply.
“How lucky for me that your husband should be here this winter! Joe says it has never happened before, except for fleeting visits while his mother was alive."
A cold draft seemed to have entered the warm, luxurious car. Mrs. Hacker’s hands were turning and twisting her handbag over and over. She wants to tell me something, Nancy realized, and remembered Joe Hacker watching Peter, weighing him in the balance, distrusting him.
Whatever it is, I must not hurry her, must not attempt to force her confidence, Nancy warned herself. If I do that I’ll destroy all we have begun to build together in the way of friendship. I must not ask anything. But, for all her resolution, a voice was crying in her mind: What is Peter doing here? She clenched her hands, and through her left glove she felt the pressure of her wedding ring. The ring itself might be a mockery but the trust that Peter had asked of her was real.
As the car moved slowly over a narrow bridge she saw the black water beneath, hemlocks laden with snow above.
“Oh, what a lovely world!” she cried out.
Mrs. Hacker looked at the glowing face of the girl beside her. Impulsively, she pressed Nancy's hand. “People like you will always make it lovely for others. I hope — other people will make it equally lovely for you.”
Nancy said slowly, “I think you want to tell me something, Mrs. Hacker.”
“No, I don’t,” the older woman said frankly. “It’s Joe’s idea. He thought I should tell you. Warn you. But the way I see it, more trouble is caused by people talking, telling things, even for the best of motives, but —” She met Nancy's steady, inquiring eyes. “Oh, it’s nothing really. Only that girl, the dizzy blonde who was at your party yesterday. I didn’t get her name clearly but someone said she was a model.”
“Miss Barbee.” Nancy's voice was steady.
“That’s the one. As I suppose you know, she is staying at the inn. Came late last night and, an hour or so later, some man tapped on her door — her room’s across the hall from ours — and they whispered a lot and then went down to the lobby to talk. This morning there was a new guest at the inn, a Mr. Nemeau, who sat at a different table and didn’t even look at her, but I felt sure he was the same one. So did Joe. And as Joe said, ‘When a man doesn’t look at that girl, and when she pays no attention to a man, there’s something darned strange.”
