Nothing Can Rescue Me (7 page)

“What do you think?”

“Good heavens. Shall you examine them for fingerprints?”

“I wouldn't bother. Florence never wrote these quotations into her book, Syl; not even with the help of the spirits.”

“I suppose not. Sally's been filling her up with a lot of mischievous nonsense, though, and I was afraid it had been too much for her nerves. I was afraid she might be splitting off a personality or something.”

“Not Florence. Sally, perhaps, if she's the wreck you make out.”

“She is. One doesn't like to scold her. One rather likes her to get what comfort she can.”

“Where do they hold the séances?”

“In the office there.”

“Does Miss Wing sit in on them?”

“Don't think so; she's a sensible girl, not like that at all.”

“You really like her, don't you?”

“I do, very much,” Sylvanus spoke sharply.

Gamadge piled the Poe and the Herbert on Ford and Marlowe. He said: “I had the pleasure of meeting your cousin Miss Hutter just now.”

“Oh, is she here to-day?” Hutter laughed. “Quite a character, didn't you think?”

“Quite. She seems intelligent, too.”

“Oh, very. We're quite fond of her, but you can't do much with—or for—that type. Just like her father. She loves to tell people that she won't be beholden to Florence and me.”

“She told me so.”

“Of course she did. Old Joel made her promise, or something. Of course Florence and I will eventually set up an annuity for her, whether she likes it or not. She can give it to the Erasmus library if she doesn't want it. But by that time she'll probably be delighted to have it; best room in the boarding-house, world cruises—if there are world cruises then. Her airs annoy Florence, but I think she really has a stiff kind of affection for us both.”

“Let's have a look at the office.” Gamadge picked up the books and followed Hutter into a narrow room with one window; it had a second door into the rear hall, and contained a large desk, a desk chair, filing cabinets, and a revolving bookcase. The space between the two doors was occupied by a bridge table and two small folding chairs; and on the bridge table stood a little heart-shaped object, mounted on two delicate wheels and an upright pencil.

“This place is smaller than it used to be,” said Gamadge, looking around him.

“Oh, yes.” Hutter raised the venetian blind as high as it would go, and pushed aside tan-coloured silk curtains. “We cut a chunk off the west side of it to make room for a new coat closet and downstairs dressing-room. We're very comfortable up here now. Game room in the basement; even Florence plays ping pong.”

Gamadge laid the pile of books on the desk. He said: “Can we lock these up anywhere?”

“Why not with the rest of Florence's script?” Hutter pulled out a deep drawer. Gamadge deposited the books in it, locked it, and held out the key.

“Keep that. I only wish the script had been locked up every night, and then all this wouldn't have happened.” Sylvanus uncovered a typewriter of somewhat ancient appearance. “We've been meaning to get a new machine for Underhill, and now, damn it, there are no more silents to be had.”

Gamadge sat down at the typewriter, placed a fresh sheet of paper in it, and after a glance at Page 83 of Chapter Nine, wrote slowly with one finger:

“What's that for?” Sylvanus leaned over his shoulder.

“That's to show you that we shall never find out from this typewriter who wrote those quotations into Florence's book. They were typed slowly, with equal pressure, in caps.”

“By Heaven, it was an ugly joke! Who did it, Gamadge? Who did it?”

“I don't know. I shall talk to the parties after lunch; but if you don't know, or can't guess, who did it, I doubt if I shall be able to.”

“I'm absolutely in the dark!”

Gamadge looked up at him, smiled faintly, and slightly shook his head.

“No, but I am, Gamadge!”

“I believe you. Did you tell Florence that Miss Wing wasn't the guilty party?”

Sylvanus stepped back, flushing. “I—who said she was the guilty party? Ridiculous!”

“You see, you have no information for me, Sylvanus. I'm to go at it blind. Do you still hope that it will all blow over, and that after being scared off by me the guilty party will mend his or her ways for ever? And never be found out?”

Sylvanus hesitated, puckered up his mouth, and at last declared: “Yes! I do!” and stared defiantly at Gamadge.

“Although it was such an ugly joke?” He added, after a pause: “You're braver than I am, Syl; I confess I shouldn't want this joker in the house with me.” Then, picking up another sheet of paper, he rose and went over to the bridge table. “So that's the oracle,” he said, leaning forward to smile down at planchette.

“Beastly little thing.” Sylvanus scowled at it.

“At least it can't use a typewriter.”

“What a ghastly idea.”

“I've never had a try at planchette. Have you?”

“I should hope not!”

“Sad to depart this life, Sylvanus, without knowing whether one's psychic or not.”

“I bet I'm not.”

“Let's try.”

“I can't now; I must give Thomas the key to the wine cellar. I'll let you know when the cocktails are ready.”

Sylvanus trotted into the hall. Gamadge closed the door after him, and the door to the library He then lowered the venetian blind, was not satisfied by the twilight he found himself in, and pulled the curtains together. He fastened them with a clip from the desk tray. Much better—the office was now in semi-darkness.

He returned to the bridge table, sat down with his back to the window, and placed his fingers on planchette.

A few minutes of waiting in dusk and silence made him reflect that ritual, properly conformed with, itself produces a sense of the reality supposed to exist behind the observance. He found himself definitely expecting some phenomenon not within the laws of nature; and when he began to be aware of a fullness in his fingers, and then a pressure against them, the material effort on him was that planchette had come to life. He knew that his arms were tired and that his fingers were weighing more heavily against the board, but, so far as his conscious perceptions were concerned, planchette was deliberately pushing at them.

And there was more to it than that. Without the slightest intention on his part, planchette was trembling, moving, sliding across the paper. Suddenly it shot off the paper entirely, and then shot back again. This process repeated itself several times, until at last Gamadge snapped on his lighter and investigated. He fully expected to see nothing but a scrawl, and that was what he did see; but a vicious-looking scrawl, which though it spelled no word seemed to mean something disagreeable, even dangerous.

He pushed planchette aside, turned the paper over, and got out a pencil. Then, placing his wrist lightly on the table, he closed his eyes; wondering if this game would be as unproductive of results as the other. It seemed totally unproductive of any result whatever. The table, it is true, pressed slyly and persistently against his hand, but nudged it in vain; for the hand apparently refused to take the hint and write anything.

Suddenly he became acutely uncomfortable in another way; something assailed his consciousness with a strong, definite warning, and he opened his eyes. He was looking with astonishment at a pale form, which seemed to float in a void. A face took shape, and dark caverns of eyes. He sat rigid for ten seconds, and then, relaxing, said cheerfully:

“Hello; that you, Sally?”

Mrs. Deedes came forward into the room. Her greying hair ceased to merge with the pallor of her face, and her face with her grey woollen dress. She said: “Dear Henry, how wonderful to see you again.”

“These doors don't make a sound, do they?” He got up and went to the window. “Let me get a look at you, Sally.”

“I'm not much to see, any more. Were you having a little séance all by yourself? How lovely.”

“I'm no good at it.” Having parted the curtains and raised the blind, he turned to survey her. He had once thought her beautiful, and her features were as fine, the poise of her head on its long neck was as graceful, as in the past. But the greying of her black hair aged her, and made her pale skin unearthly; it had the same tone as her antique pearl earrings and necklace, and the same purplish shadows.

The day was overcast. She stood in the pallid light, bending over the bridge table, a spectre of herself. But she spoke gaily:

“You say you're no good at it? Why, this is very nice, Henry. Did you do it with planchette?”

“Planchette? No, I didn't do anything with anything.” He came to gaze with incredulity at a mincing line of words, run together without a break, which when separated formed the following mawkish invitation:

Gamadge, shocked, inquired: “Did I do that?”

“Of course you did. Was it automatic writing?”

“My hand never moved, and it's not my writing.” Gamadge looked about him as if for the half-wit upon whom he might foist responsibility.

“It's never in one's own handwriting, and one's hand seldom seems to move. One doesn't do it one's self, Henry.”

“I'm glad of that.”

“Something takes hold.”

“If a mosquito could write, that's the handwriting of a mosquito; but not even the spirit of a mosquito would bother to come back to earth and invite Goodwin to dance round a tree.”

“It may not be a spirit, Henry. I'm not sure that the mischievous influence that has been troubling Underhill was ever on earth at all.” She looked at him gravely.

“No elemental ever heard of Goodwin. Goodwin was a boy I used to know, and an earthy one. Goodwin belongs to my unconscious—I don't consciously think of him, I can tell you.”

“The strangest things come through.”

“You really think a malicious being of some sort wrote that fearsome stuff in Florence's novel?”

“Even the malicious ones can't hurt us.”

“This one will probably end by hurting somebody severely in his or her finances. If I believed in them, Sally, I should hesitate to invite them into my life.”

“But it's really rather gratifying; it shows that Florence is really in rapport.”

“With the spirit world?”

“Of course.”

Gamadge produced Chapter Nine. “Did you study these interpolations?”

“I saw each one once, after it came.”

“Did they impress you at all? Did their rhythms fall upon your ear with any grandeur? Did they, in fact, damn it all, strike you as the sort of thing that could possibly originate with a being who would exhort Goodwin to dance round a tree?” Gamadge paused to draw breath.

“I don't know what you mean, Henry. That Demon one—”

“That Demon one is literary. Literary. Mine came from my kindergarten; Florence's were produced by four men of genius—Poe, George Herbert the seventeenth-century English religious poet, John Ford, and Christopher Marlowe—Elizabethan dramatists.”

“You mean they are quotations?”

“They are.”

“How very, very interesting.”

“You think a spirit of any kind whatsoever would bother to send somebody else's stuff through, via planchette or via that typewriter there?”

“Nobody knows what they'd do, Henry.”

“You're just talking about spirits so that you won't have to think the thing out. I bet you have a notion who did it, which you won't admit even to yourself.”

“I haven't any notion.” She looked distressed.

“You've known all these people all these years.”

“That's just it. None of them would play such a trick on Florence.”

“Would they play such a trick on one another, though?”

“What?” she seemed dazed.

“I do wish you'd use your wits on it. They used to be good ones—must be good still, if you're able to run a dress shop and make it pay.”

“It doesn't pay now, and I've changed since you knew me; I'm more than forty-five—I'm old and stupid. Did you hear that I've had to let Bill go?”

Gamadge had a sudden clear vision of Bill Deedes, his face calm and gay, vaulting over a tennis net. He said gently: “Yes. Too bad.”

“I wish he had ever tried to get on with Florence. She's been awfully good to me, but she never cared much for Bill.”

“People like Bill can't pretend, Sally.”

“No.”

Gamadge put Chapter Nine back into his pocket. “I'll have more to say after lunch. Do you suppose cocktails are ready? I could manage one, couldn't you?”

“I'm dying for one,” said Mrs. Deedes.

Gamadge and Mrs. Deedes left the office by the door leading to the hall. Another door faced them, which belonged to a large cupboard under the stairs. This had always been crammed with hats, coats and overshoes, games and garden implements, skates, golf bags, archery bows and arrows, dog leashes and walking sticks; and it had smelled outrageously of rubber, leather, and lubricating oils.

Gamadge looked at it, and then looked over his shoulder at another door along the hall. “I suppose that's the new closet and dressing-room,” he said.

“Yes, and it's such a comfort. It has racks for our coats, and there's even a little flower room and sink.”

“This one must be quite cleared up.”

Mrs. Deedes smiled. “It is. We can shut the griffons in here when they bark too much.”

“They don't smother?”

“No, they like it.”

“Like it?”

“They often rush in without being told to after they've been barking at plumbers.”

“Really?” Gamadge stood looking down the hall, which ended in darkness and a swing door. A short passage corresponding to the one on the second floor led to the back stairs and the entrance to the cellar flight.