Part 10

Petra exclaimed, “Not you! You couldn’t know I might be—abnormally dishonorable. But I haven’t told you really why I did it. And you asked. I didn’t know McCloud was that McCloud—Edyth’s husband. I didn’t even think about the names being the same. He came to the office this morning to see you. I said he must wait till to-morrow. Janet said that was a mistake, that you would have seen him. It came to me, while Janet was out at lunch, that if I had known about this case, McCloud’s case—as Janet knew about it—I wouldn’t have made the mistake. So I walked right in here and looked him up—the way you would in a library, you know, a Who’s Who or something. I wanted to be efficient, to understand what it was all about. But I _was_ crazy. It was as bad as reading private letters. I see that now. I’m not like Shelley. The heat numbs me. My brains stand still....”

“It looks as if they did!” But then he was sorry. He needn’t have said that. But could he believe her in what she had just said? Could he believe that it had not been mere curiosity about the mistaken marriage of a woman she happened to know that had brought Petra to his files? Well, strangely, he did believe her. She had lied, he supposed, about the book she said she had been reading that afternoon at Green Doors, and he knew she had lied about his keeping her working here after hours. All the same, he believed that she was telling the truth now.

“I wonder what McCloud wanted. Wish I had seen him. Didn’t he leave any message?” He would make her forget his anger, which was so quickly passing.

Petra told him what McCloud had written, except for the upside-down sentence. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you he came, since he asked me particularly not to. But I couldn’t have you think it was because I knew Edyth. Curiosity of that sort—well, I wouldn’t have felt any temptation. Truly, I wouldn’t.”

His eyes were studying her face. She went on, “Of course, you will fire me. There’s no reason you shouldn’t. But since it was you who made my stepmother cut my allowance in two, you ought to persuade her to give it back again—if I’m not to have this job now. Will you do that?”

She stopped, waiting for him to answer. But he said nothing, merely continued to look at her, while his expression changed. It was ice again. With the instinct to justify herself she stammered, “I told you—I _told you_—at the guest house—Saturday—that it was a _salary_ Clare paid me, not an allowance. I know that she said it wasn’t so—that very night—that you heard her. But why should you believe her more than me? Anyway, I must have that thousand again. It is your fault I lost it.”

“But don’t you want to keep this job?” Lewis asked.

He was beginning to admit to himself, at last, that Petra Farwell was beyond him. He simply did not understand her.

“Yes. I do want to keep it. Very much. But how can I—after this?”

“I think it would be much better to keep it and make a success of it than—than go back to the twenty-four-hour-a-day stepdaughter job. Don’t you?”

Petra nodded. She had a voice but she did not trust it.

“Easier, even?”

Again she nodded.

“Well, you’re a great help to Miss Frazier. She says so.”

“She won’t now.” She _sounded_ all right. You couldn’t hear a tear.

“Oh, yes, I think she will. She was angry with herself just now, more than with you, I imagine. Just as I was—with myself, I mean. Am still, as a matter of fact. Miss Frazier realized that she should have warned you about the privacy of the files and I knew that it was very nearly criminal of me to leave the files unlocked while I was out. So we’ve all had a miserable time of it. Did you look at anything besides McCloud’s history, by the way?”

“No.”

“All right. If you’ll only wait a little this afternoon till I’m free, Petra, I’d like the pleasure of driving you out to Meadowbrook. I want you to finish about Teresa. Of course, you know that.”

“Dick’s driving me out.” But as Petra saw Doctor Pryne’s disappointment, she said quickly almost the precise words she had said earlier to Dick, “But it wouldn’t pay you, anyway, even if he wasn’t. Clare is giving a big dinner party to-night and she’ll be busy seeing to things. She does the flowers herself, cuts them and everything. It takes simply hours.”

“Good Lord! What has Mrs. Farwell’s cutting the flowers to do with it? It is you I want to talk to. When will you finish about Teresa, then? You said when we were alone next. And will you take me to see her? I have been looking forward to seeing her again ever since our talk—at the guest house.”

Lewis saw the look of deviousness creep over Petra’s face then, and he knew, almost certainly, that whatever she said next would have no reality in it. She was baffling to exasperation.

“I’ll take you to see Teresa if she invites you. But there’s nothing more to tell you, really. Only I beg you not to mention her to Clare again, not to tell her any more of all that I told you. I don’t know how much you did tell her. She hasn’t said a word about it and I haven’t asked. But you won’t again, will you?”

“My dear! That was a stupid slip I made. I broke my promise of secrecy. But why should I talk about anything with Mrs. Farwell? It is you I am trying to talk with—and you put me off. You don’t say anything _true_ to me any more.”

“What do you want to know? About Teresa, I mean? I’ve told you the absolute truth about her.”

“Yes, I know that—as far as it went. But I want the rest, all of it!” Lewis exclaimed. “What Teresa did next. You said she was ready to become a secretary and something happened. I want to know what happened, what she is doing now, how things are with her. I’ve been waiting days.”

But even before Petra opened her lips, Lewis gave up hope of her answering him truly. He saw her choosing between several possible answers. And when she said, deliberately, very carefully, “Teresa got her chance to go to college. She supports herself by dress-designing. She’s all right, thank you,” Lewis knew that while these might be facts, they weren’t the truth; they left him exactly where he had been left Saturday. He knew not one real thing more. The swordlike reticence in Petra’s gentian eyes guarded her against his knowing now every bit as effectively as against Clare’s, her father’s, and Dick’s. But Dick! Saturday Dick had seemed to stand with Clare and Farwell over against Petra’s guard. But had that, perhaps, changed? Certainly he was very much in evidence—lunching with Petra to-day, driving her out to-night. Lewis himself had been away four days. Anything could have happened in four days. Had Dick waked up, come to his senses?

“There’s your telephone,” he said then. “It’s been ringing some time. Miss Frazier can’t hear it with her door shut and typing like that. You’d better see to it. It’s your job.”

Petra flew to her desk, shutting the doctor’s door softly, on the wing. The one thought she took with her, and it was utterly comforting, in spite of the tears in her throat, was that she still had a job.

_Chapter Thirteen_

Saturday noon Lewis came near having a scene with his secretary, when he insisted that, for once, she must take the half holiday. “No, you cannot have the next chapter.” He felt rather like an ugly dog barking up at her, with his paws on a bone—the bone his manuscript. “I’ve got to keep it to revise. I fumbled it terribly last night. Couldn’t seem to concentrate. You get along out to some beach or other. Lie in the sun. You’re white as a daisy. Good-by and thanks.”

There had been strife; but Lewis, continuing to ape the behavior of a dog with his bone, and doing it rather successfully, had finally won and Miss Frazier went for her hat and bag. But she came back in a second to explain, “Petra is staying to practice typing. Won’t it disturb you if you’re working here? Mr. Wilder is coming for her at four. She wants to wait for him.”

“What! Again?” But Lewis pulled himself up. He said in answer to her question, “I don’t think it’ll disturb me. That door is very nearly soundproof.”

“I want to tell you that she is broken-hearted about yesterday, Doctor. She can’t get over it. Nothing like that will ever happen again, I know. She’s awfully silly in some ways but she’s—she’s all right. Really she is.”

“Yes, I know she is.” But Lewis looked up with quick gratitude at his secretary. She was rather all right herself, he was thinking. He smiled at her. It was a more human, a more personal smile than she had ever had from her employer before. She smiled, dimly, back. She was silly herself, a thousand times sillier than Petra. If Doctor Pryne saw that she was fighting tears, he would think she had gone out of her head. She turned quickly away.

In the reception office Janet said to Petra, “The door’s soundproof. Doctor Pryne mightn’t even know you are staying if I hadn’t told him. But it’s a long time till four. Don’t work too hard. I’ll meet you Sunday at twelve.”

Petra answered, her hands suspended over the typewriter keys, “I love it, Janet. I love typing. You’re going to be proud of me some day. I’ll be as good a secretary as you are. To-morrow at noon, yes. How nice it will be!”

That was at two. At three-thirty Lewis put the manuscript chapter into his brief-case and got up, stretching. He lit a cigarette, turned to the window and stood looking out for a minute. Then he took a few quick paces back and forth between the windows and the reception-office door. Then he pushed the patients’ easy chair from its usual position till its back was at the window for whatever breeze there was. Dick was coming for Petra at four. Lewis himself expected McCloud at the same time. Well, this was only half-past three. He opened the door into his reception office.

Petra was working at shorthand now, her typewriter covered up until Monday. One hand was in her curls, ruffling them, and she appeared to be eating the rubber end of her pencil. She looked at Lewis dazedly. She was white with the heat in the stuffy little room. The doors should all have been opened—or else she shouldn’t have stayed. It was not quite so warm as yesterday, but it was bad enough.

“There’s a breeze in my office,” Lewis said. “A baby one, but rather nice. Put away the lessons, do, and come along in. I’m going to lay off too—till four.”

The violet of her frock was cool against the dark leather of the patients’ chair. Why did she wear a yellow belt? Her thin stockings were yellow, gold-yellow. Yellow and violet, with her gentian eyes, and vital gold-brown curls brushed on her neck, back from her ears, made Petra too lovely to look at with a level gaze. Why shouldn’t Petra care hugely about clothes and spend all the dollars a year on them she could lay her hands on—if clothes did this! The yellow belt was magic—a narrow yellow magic made of nothing in the world but a silly, twisted bit of silk cord.

Hundreds of women had sat in that chair facing Lewis, for years past, and at no other time could he recall noticing what one of them had worn. But he could no more help noticing this violet, cool frock of Petra’s with the yellow belt than he could help noticing the texture of flowers near at hand. The loveliness of Petra’s frocks was as inescapable as the loveliness of flowers.

He offered her a cigarette. She took one but only, he felt, because she did not see what they were going to talk about and this was something to relieve the awkwardness.... This time, when he held the match for her, their eyes did not meet....

Lewis put his arm along his desk. First of all, he had a duty to perform. He should have done it yesterday had he not taken it for granted it was unnecessary. But in the middle of the night he had been bothered by that taking for granted. Now was the time to get it off his mind,—and pray heaven it was not too late.

“You’re not to mind what I’m going to say, Petra. Probably it’s totally unnecessary. But you will give me your promise now, won’t you, quite solemnly, never so long as you live, to tell any one—any one at all—anything that you learned about my patient McCloud yesterday. You haven’t mentioned any of it to a soul, have you?”

Petra looked at him. No faltering now. Truth was on the way. She said almost before he had finished, “No, of course I haven’t told a soul and of course I promise. I do understand and you can trust me.” But even as she finished, panic came. She put her hand to her mouth. She had remembered something. Lewis _saw_ her remember.

His heart sank. This was too bad—too terribly too bad. He exclaimed, “You have told some one, Petra. Who? In God’s name!”

“No,—no, I haven’t—” But she stopped the lie. She couldn’t lie to this man. In the first place, he could spot it. In the second place, she did not want to, somehow. She said, miserably, “I told Teresa. I told her every word. I’d forgotten. But that doesn’t count as telling. It’s like telling one’s self. She is so safe.... I told her that McCloud was Edyth’s husband. She had known her in Cambridge. And all about the flying accident. I told her that. And his mother’s dying. I told her, too, how McCloud had only seen his baby at the hospital. Less than two weeks. That seemed so unjust—so cruel! Oh, yes, I guess I told Teresa everything. You see—You see, _I thought she might help_.”

“Petra! You are terrible!” Lewis groaned. “You’re impossible!”

But Petra seemed not to mind his consternation. She was looking past Lewis’ head, a question in her eyes. Lewis swung around and there was Neil McCloud himself, standing midway in the room—his expression murderous.

McCloud was early for his appointment and had expected to be kept waiting until four at least. But when he found the reception room deserted and the doctor’s door wide open, he naturally came to it. It had taken him some seconds to take it in—what was going on here—that the man he had entrusted with his confidences as implicitly as if he had been a priest in the confessional was using those confidences as a peg on which to hang a flirtation with a beautiful new secretary. They sat here in the place where he had written it all, hashing it over together. Telling his secrets.... As Edyth had hashed over things with her father, old man Dayton, telling his secrets.... Terrible secrets....

For in this moment he remembered what Pryne had so long wanted him to remember! Pryne had questioned and questioned. Coaxed at his strangely blank memory. And nothing doing. But now it was here. Clear, bright as a lightning flash. Now, when remembering was no good to anybody! What the old man had said, over the telephone, when McCloud had called him up that night to ask him what he had done with Edyth and their son, was this:

“Edyth has told me everything. You killed your brother. You broke your mother’s heart. But you shan’t break my daughter’s heart and ruin my grandson’s life. I have the power to protect my own. There isn’t anything you can say. _Don’t say a word._”

And you had been obedient. You had gone dumb from that minute. In obedience to Edyth’s father, who knew that you had killed your brother and broken your mother’s heart. Edyth had told him all that. Told the old man. All the things you had told her before you would marry her, in sacred confidence. And now the old man was shouting at you through the telephone. It was as if no time had passed since. As if you were hearing it this minute, while you stood frozenly staring at Pryne and his stenographer: “There isn’t anything you can say. Don’t say a word.”

Let the old brute shout! Keep on shouting through your brain! You don’t mind it now. At least this one thing about you, Pryne shouldn’t ever possess. One little bit he wouldn’t tell his beautiful stenographer—simply because he wouldn’t ever know it. And now you’d get out,—right out into the darkness which had been compassing you ever since the moment the kid went out in your arms.

Pryne was getting up. The girl was up too. Why didn’t your hate and scorn blast them where they stood? It was strong enough to do that. But hate failing, there was the revolver. No! Shut up. Don’t think of that. The kid—Mother—those were lives enough for you to have destroyed. Two—three steps, and you would follow those beloveds into the dark void. You should have followed before. But instead you had come whining for help to this—fashionable psychiatrist. Hell! Your teeth were clenched with the will it took not to put your hand to the pocket holding the revolver. It was essential that you should be outside the door, that it should be between you and them, or Pryne might somehow manage to spoil it. The doctor had a look in his eyes—as if he suspected or even knew your intention. But you weren’t even touching your pocket. Your hands were at your sides. Straight down. How could Pryne know what you were going to do?

Well, Pryne wouldn’t move, wouldn’t interfere, you were sure of it, as long as you kept your eyes steady and your hands at your sides. You started backing toward the door, holding the skunk where he was with your scorn of him, and his girl beside him there, wide-eyed and scared. She was a damned beauty. You had been right when you told her so. You would back through the door. They should not stir. Then you would close it with one lightning motion. But you must remember to use the left hand. The right must be kept for the business of shooting your brains out before either of them could stir. It would be a neat job. That was one thing they should never hash over together,—your _attempted_ suicide. Attempted! Like hell, attempted! You’d have one clean mark for that, so help you Christ.

At that moment McCloud’s seeking heel felt the rise of the doorsill, the rim of the dark void.

_Chapter Fourteen_

On Wednesday Neil McCloud had lost his job of mechanic for the Ajax people. At least the top boss had come along and Neil had surmised from the dark looks he cast in his direction, as he spoke in a confidentially low tone to Neil’s boss, that he was ragging him for keeping on such a handicapped man when there were hundreds of good men to choose from. So Neil had gone up, as soon as the fellow had left, and discharged himself. His boss had a wife and small children. Nobody’s position was any too secure these days. And the top boss had had a very nasty look in his eye not only for Neil, but for Neil’s benefactor. Neil had quaked under it. But not for himself. So he walked out of the place, just another fellow out of a job.

A week ago, he had done a rash thing. One of the friends of his married days—still, supposedly, a friend of Edyth’s—had seen him in crowded Summer Street, rushed up to him and said that she must have some money. Her husband had failed to meet her with it as he had promised, her bags were waiting in the South Station for a week-end she was spending on the Cape with friends, Neil must give her every cent he had on him and probably that wouldn’t be enough! But would he hurry! He _had_ hurried. He pulled his roll from his pocket—Saturday was pay day—and pushed it into pretty, smart Joyce Clayton’s yawning snakeskin purse. His only thought during the act was gratitude that the woman was in such a tearing hurry that she seemed not to notice his wordlessness. It was his pride that none of that crowd should know how things were with him, and until this meeting with Joyce, success had seemed childishly easy; they hadn’t bothered. But as Joyce had rolled off in the taxi into which he had put her silent—and she not noticing his wordlessness—she had leaned out and called back, “Your address, Neil darling! For heaven’s sake, what is it? I’ll send a check to-morrow.” He had smiled, raised his hat and blotted himself out from her eyes in the crowds of Summer Street. When he discovered that he hadn’t even any loose change in his pocket and must walk back to his room supperless and even put off breakfast until he could borrow at the works on next week’s salary, he was not much concerned. He had some chocolate in his room and plenty of cigarettes. The chocolate served for supper and breakfast, and the few dollars he let himself borrow on Monday kept him fed until Wednesday, when—instead of asking for more—he walked out penniless an hour after getting to the garage. There would be no more wages to ask an advance on.

He walked over to the Common and sat on a bench all morning, doing what he described to himself as face the situation. But every little while he stopped looking into the ugly face of his predicament and tried to speak. If he could only even whisper! He tried to say his own name. He tried it dozens of times but the only result was the ghost of a sob.

When the noon bells and whistles sounded he came, before they ceased, to a determination. He would look for work—yes—go into machine shops and garages with pencil and pad in his hand, and offer his services. He would face down all the curiosity and jeers that would come to him for his inability to speak. He would scour Boston for any sort of job where speech was not essential. But he would not go to any one to borrow money for food. If he got a job, O.K. If not, starving would be a natural way out and nobody, not even his guardian angel, could call it suicide.

Neil had followed what seemed to him this fair plan with action. Hungry, he had job-hunted steadily, until Friday morning. Friday morning, in the pursuit of the impossible job, he had stumbled, in a dirty alley, on a little abandoned paper bag half full of peanuts. Yes, it seemed too good to be true; and indeed he was by this time in such a giddy state that it might very easily be illusion. He had not been sure it wasn’t, until he had them in his teeth. Then, as he threw the bag from him, empty, Neil remembered that to-morrow his room rent would be due. But something else about Saturday was important too. After some groping he remembered—an appointment with Doctor Pryne.

Doctor Pryne! The handful of peanuts seemed only to have increased his hunger. Good luck, stumbled upon so astonishingly, had weakened his will, he thought; but anyway, he would ask Doctor Pryne for the loan of a dollar. Then he would buy himself food. He would go now and get the money. With meat and coffee to back him up, the Saturday’s séance must work—_Doctor Pryne must cure him._ Anyway, it would be Neil’s last shot before letting himself starve. There was some chance it might work. Pryne was always holding out hope—always seemed expectant of the thing’s breaking. But even if it didn’t work, and the cure didn’t come through on Saturday, and consequently he never got another job, and starved, and so never paid back that dollar,—_Pryne was a good fellow._ Neil would rather be owing Doctor Lewis Pryne a dollar through eternity than any other soul he knew. He’d give himself that one more chance.

So he had walked the miles up to the doctor’s office on the strength of the peanuts. And a new girl in the reception office—only she looked like something in a fairy tale, and almost as illusory as the peanuts—had said Pryne couldn’t possibly see him till his appointment the next day.

What he had done between then and his return just now a little ahead of his appointment time, Neil could not have told—or written. The one thing he knew, knew constantly, was that he had not eaten.

Now as his groping heel found the rim of the dark, and his left hand reached for the door knob, Neil was grateful that after all he had not seen Doctor Pryne yesterday. Now, as it was, he would be taking no debt to this man over the ultimate doorsill; for, in this moment of confusion, the hours the doctor had spent on him, for which he could never now send a bill, did not loom as debt in the young man’s aching brain.