Nothing Can Rescue Me (3 page)

“You haven't changed a bit” She kept both his hands in a nervous grip when he straightened to look down at her. He couldn't say the same; she had changed a good deal. Whatever her maid Louise could do had been done for her, but Florence herself had ceased to take an interest in herself. Her hair, dyed a bright brown, had not been carefully rearranged for him as it would have been in earlier days, and she had painted a purplish-red mouth crookedly over her own. She had aged greatly since her marriage; her round hazel eyes had lost all their brightness. She looked as though she no longer cared to be young, and had no idea how to be old.

“Dear Florrie,” said Gamadge.

Her ringed hands jerked at his. “I was so frightfully disappointed when Syl told me your wife was away, Henry. Why did you marry her in Arizona or somewhere? I've never laid eyes on the child.”

“I'll bring her up to see you when she gets home.” He looked about him, pulled up a satinwood chair, and sat down. “I'm not at all sure that I like the idea of your staying up here indefinitely. You'll be bored, and that's not good for you or anybody.”

“We often go to town. I got so upset with the blackouts and everything that I couldn't stay in New York. Even if we blackout here, it won't seem so close to the war. I feel so safe here. I mean I did feel so safe, till these things happened. At first I was just angry.”

“And aren't you now?”

“No. I'm frightened. Henry—” she clutched at his hand again—“Henry—I'm not doing the things myself. I'm not crazy.”

“Definitely you're not.”

“Tell them so! Tell everybody I'm not doing the things myself!”

“You must first tell me all about it, Florrie; that's what I'm here for.”

She sat back against her blue-satin pillows. “I know you won't laugh and say it's a joke. That's what Tim says.”

“Perhaps he's just trying to reassure you. Tell me about it.”

“Well, you see, I began to write a novel. I can hardly bear to think of it now.”

“Oh, why? It seemed to me so sporting of you.”

Mrs. Mason's face brightened a little. “I liked doing it, Henry. I was never so surprised in my life—it wasn't hard at all!”

“What a clever girl you are.”

“I know they say there's a story in everyone's life, if we could only write it.”

“If.”

“And of course the story in my life was Tim and me. Our affair. I thought I'd write it, making myself of course very much younger. So that it would be more popular, you know.” She looked at him anxiously.

“One makes these concessions to the tastes of the larger public.”

“Our affair, Tim's and mine, was so interesting and so unusual. Of course the romance doesn't last.”

“Doesn't it?”

“They say not. But when I began to write, it all came back to me. The ideas seemed actually to flow!”

“Did they?” Gamadge's eye wandered rather apprehensively to a sheaf of manuscript on a table at Mrs. Mason's elbow. “I dictate to my secretary, Evelyn Wing. Then she types out what we've done, and next day we discuss it. If it needs revising, she types it again.”

“What I call an ideal arrangement.”

“I have no trouble at all. Evelyn looks up things for me, and makes such excellent suggestions. She's very highly educated, you know, so I don't have to worry about making mistakes.”

“You seem to have a paragon there.”

“Oh, I couldn't live without her now! It's not only that she's clever; she's so good to me. So kind. I regard her as one of my best and dearest friends.” Mrs. Mason looked at him with what seemed a touch of bravado.

“Why not?”

“She runs the household, she does our cheque-books and answers invitations, and when I had flu last year she sat up all night until Dr. Burbage sent a nurse. She isn't silly about men, and she doesn't fly into a temper if I get nervous.”

“You're not getting too dependent on her, Florrie? These young people move on; they have their own lives to lead.”

“Evelyn won't leave me while I need her. You know—I get cross, sometimes, Henry.” She gave him a sidelong look. “People are so provoking.”

“They are.”

“Instead of taking offence she just sits quietly and waits for me to get over it. Even Sally Deedes takes offence sometimes, when I rage to her about Bill.”

“Sally found this treasure for you?”

“Yes, Sally's her cousin—much older, of course. Evelyn's people all died, and she had no money, and she went through a dreadful time. Sally told me; Evelyn never talks about it.”

Gamadge silently agreed that Miss Wing must have had a dreadful time.

“I've made Father's den into an office for her. You remember the den?”

Gamadge remembered it, and the rather wolfish old gentleman who had growled in it.

“Evelyn typed my novel in the den every night. Then she took the page she had got to out of the typewriter and left it on top of the pile of script.” Mrs. Mason turned to pick up the clipped sheaf of papers from the little stand beside her. “We were on Chapter Nine; here's all we've done of it.” She handed him the sheets, and suddenly there was stark tenor in her eyes. “Please look at Page 83.”

Gamadge looked at
her
, and then turned to Page 83.

“Now begin at the marked paragraph.”

Gamadge found the marked paragraph, and read aloud:

Gamadge stared, looked up at Mrs. Mason, and stared again. “What on earth?” he at last demanded.

Mrs. Mason's lips were pressed tightly together. “Somebody wrote that in?” he asked.

“There it was, all in big capitals, when Evelyn went and got the script the next morning. A week ago yesterday.”

“Friday, the thirteenth?”

“Friday, the thirteenth.”

“That was overdoing it.”

“I never noticed the date at the time, I was so annoyed. It seemed like such a silly kind of joke, and nobody would own up to it. And it sounded so
wicked
, somehow. Not like a joke at all. I don't see how anybody thought of it. It's too senseless. It's too
strange
.”

“Poe is considered rather strange at times,” said Gamadge.

“Poe!”

“Yes. E. A. Poe. It's a quotation from Poe.”

“Well, I must say I'm glad to hear it; it makes everything a little less uncanny, even the other ones.”

“Are there other ones?”

“Wait until you see them. This is nothing.”

“And you say nobody in the house realized that it was a quotation from anybody?”

“No. Ought they to have recognized it? Of course I shouldn't.”

“I don't think the average person would recognize it; I do, because I just happen to know the piece it comes from: ‘Silence—A Fable.' It's a good deal more sinister in this context than it is in its own. Miss Wing seems to have gone on from it as if it were part of the text.”

“She wanted to throw the page away and say nothing about it; she was annoyed, because it seemed to be poking fun at me, in a way; at my book.”

“Queer way to go at it.”

“Too queer. I wouldn't let her touch it! I wanted to leave it right in the page, just as it was. We found it that Friday, as I said, and on Saturday morning we found—look at Page 89.”

She watched him as he did so. He read the marked passage:

Gamadge communed with this for a moment in silence. Then he looked up at Mrs. Mason. “Surely,” he said, “you all realized that this is a quotation.”

“No, we didn't.”

“Syl didn't? Miss Wing didn't?”

“Nobody did. We just thought it was queer—like the other.”

“It isn't queer like the other. It's from George Herbert; it's from a poem called ‘A Paradox.' Lovely thing.”

“I never heard of it, and I don't remember ever having heard of George Herbert, either.”

“Did you still think that somebody was playing a peculiar joke on you?”

“I was sure they were making fun of my novel. I made an awful fuss. Is it so funny?” asked Mrs. Mason, with a wistful look at him. “It seems to me to be just like what I read.”

“It's not the kind of thing that's exactly in my line, but I should say you were making a very good job of it. What does Miss Wing say about your work?”

“She won't criticize anything but the grammar and punctuation and that sort of thing. She says she never can get any perspective on the work of people she knows.”

“She seems to be a person of great intelligence indeed.” Gamadge looked down at Page 89, and said: “I see that you and she went sternly on, in spite of these curious additions to the text.”

“We certainly did go on. I told everybody that if the jokes went on I should find out who was doing it, and I'd never forgive them. It would be the end. Now Page 92—we hadn't the heart to do more than three pages on Saturday. See what we found on Sunday morning.”

Gamadge read:

When Gamadge looked up from this, his face was grave. Mrs. Mason said quickly: “That's the way Evelyn looked when she saw it.”

“She noticed a change of tone?”

“It—it seems to warn me.”

“There is an implied threat. Here—keep calm, Florrie; don't go off the handle, now; I need your co-operation.”

Mrs. Mason tore at her handkerchief. “We decided to sit up and watch, at least Evelyn did. Nothing happened, of course; it's impossible to do anything in this house without everybody else knowing about it. I couldn't work on Sunday or Monday, but I did a few pages on Tuesday, and I absolutely forced myself to do some more on Wednesday! I had to know what was coming! But on Thursday morning I couldn't stand it; I made Syl get hold of you.”

On the last page but one Gamadge read:

Mrs. Mason, anxiously waiting until he had finished, burst out in a wail: “What is it from, Henry? What is it from?”

“Play by John Ford; and so's the other—unless I'm much mistaken.” Gamadge lifted angry eyes to hers. “Keep calm, Florrie. They may very well just be tasteless fooling with your text.”

“Look at the last one.” Mrs. Mason's tone was the quiet tone of one who is reconciled to the worst. “Look at the last one, and then say it's tasteless fooling!”

“Now, don t forget that they're all quotations; I should have thought anybody would know that, just to glance at them.”

“I didn't know it; and that lets me out, Henry; and besides, I can't even type!”

Gamadge turned to the last page. He read Mrs. Mason's harmless lines, and then the great and terrible words that followed them:

Gamadge, rearranging the pages of Chapter Nine, said in a voice of cold disgust: “Marlowe;
Doctor Faustus
.”

A glimmer of satisfaction could be observed in Mrs. Mason's eye; she had sampled her Compendium of Useful Knowledge, was sure that it contained the answers to all her problems, and now prepared to buy it: “Henry, you know everything. I'll give you five thousand dollars if you'll find out who put those quotations into my book, and why they did it.”

“Fair enough.” Gamadge laid Chapter Nine on his knees, gave Mrs. Mason a cigarette, and lighted it and his own. “But I never may find out, you know. Crime in the family circle—it often goes unpunished, you know. I'm certain of one thing, Florrie; you didn't do it. All these authors didn't lie buried in your unconscious.”

“Do you think automatic writing is just what is in your mind all the time?” She asked it wistfully.

“I do. Many people disagree with me.”

“Sally Deedes is sure it's spirits; but she's psychic, and I'm not.”

Gamadge frowned. “What has transformed that once sceptical and frivolous creature? She used to be as materialistic as anybody I ever knew in my life.”

“She's had so much trouble, Henry; with Bill, you know. I managed to make her divorce him at last, but she's still broken-hearted. After a year! The occult takes her mind off him.”

“Let her take the medicine that agrees with her, but let her not hand it on to you. That medicine doesn't agree with everybody.” He added, removing his cigarette to look at her sharply: “You don't think the spirits annotated your script, do you?”