The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (11 page)

“Just think of it, Bosty,” said Harris cheerfully as the friends walked home. “Tonight we'll have Adelaide back again.”

THE INQUIRY AGENT,
despite his immensely active mind, was a man of great patience. Though this quality had at first been imposed on him by his deformity, which prevented rapid movement, he had cultivated it until it had become perhaps his most formidable attribute. He could wait a lifetime, if necessary, to trap and destroy his prey. But when at last he moved, the unhurried tap-thump of his stick and boot was as relentless and terrible as the approach of the angel of death.

He sat in the back parlor of the Old Ship awaiting word of the move he knew must come. The only other occupant of the parlor was Ralph Bunnion's friend, Frederick. From time to time Frederick glanced at him with nervous amiability. Mr. Raven fingered his glass and smiled deprecatingly at his boot.

“Poor bastard!” muttered Frederick impulsively. At bottom he was a generous and even kindly young man. Mr. Raven looked up and Frederick reddened and hid his face in his tankard.

“Indeed, you're right!” said Mr. Raven, eagerly moving closer. “I
am
very narrow in my means, and certainly might be considered poor next to you and your friends. And as for the other, there's no doubt about it. I was a foundling, you know. But it's all God's will, young man. He knows best.”

“I—I—” began Frederick, then breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Ralph Bunnion enter the parlor. But the damage had been done. Having been neatly trapped into extending sympathy to the man with the clubfoot, he could not get rid of him when Ralph came to sit down. Not that the horrible fellow seemed to push himself forward. It was just that he wouldn't move away. He sat too close for comfort, meekly silent and staring at his boot in the most pathetic manner imaginable.

“Saturday,” muttered Ralph at length, seeing further privacy was impossible. “It's to be Saturday. Brett told my pa yesterday, so you'd better get the you-know-whats oiled and ready.”

“I've got 'em here, old sport,” breathed Frederick, producing the case of pistols and endeavoring to conceal them from the clubfooted man's innocent eyes.

“Not now. Saturday, I said.”

“Where?”

The stranger bent forward with involuntary
interest. Frederick stared at him with hostility. An unwise expression; Mr. Raven made a mental note to enmesh him in the design. The inquiry agent was a dangerous man to cross.

“Brett will tell you,” said Ralph.

“Brett—Brett!” exclaimed Frederick peevishly. He was hurt and angry that Mr. Brett seemed to be supplanting him in an affair where he, of all people, should be standing closest to Ralph. After all, he was Ralph's friend, and he was providing the pistols. “It's always Brett these days, ain't it! Anybody would think he'd arranged the whole thing!”

“They would indeed,” breathed Mr. Raven, finishing his drink and heaving himself upright. “They would indeed, my friend.” He nodded politely to the two young men and clumped out of the parlor to make certain additions to the architecture of his plan.

The Harris household had spent a grim day. Mrs. Harris could not be persuaded to leave the nursery and Dr. Harris had given instructions that she was not to be left alone there for more than a few minutes. Her grief had shown no signs of diminishing and the doctor had very real fears that she would do the mysterious Gypsy baby an injury.

Even when the wet nurse came to perform her duty, it was only under the haggard eyes of the forlorn mother, and as she confided in Morgan the nurse, “It's a wonder me milk don't curdle into cheese.”

The wet nurse came in the afternoons at about a
quarter after five. Dr. Harris himself let her in and took her upstairs. He was a humane man and did not want the unknown baby to suffer. Thus, when there came a knock on the door at the expected time, the doctor was rather put out to find that it was Mr. Brett from the school, wanting a word with him.

“I'd be obliged if you'd be brief, Mister Brett,” he said, remaining in the hall. “As you must know, we have grave family troubles.”

Mr. Brett nodded. He didn't know, but on the other hand he had enough troubles of his own without being burdened with Dr. Harris's.

“Doctor Bunnion would be grateful, sir,” he said, coming directly to the point, “if you would attend a duel on Saturday morning.”

Dr. Harris gaped at him, and Mr. Brett explained matters as briefly and discreetly as he could. The doctor sighed and shrugged his shoulders. At any other time he would have been amazed and fascinated, but the loss of Adelaide so dominated his mind that all else seemed trifling. “You understand that I am a physician, Mister Brett, not a surgeon.”

“But Doctor Bunnion was particularly anxious, sir—”

At this point Dr. Harris heard the unmistakable shuffle and flop of the wet nurse's step. “Very well, very well,” he muttered agitatedly. “Let me know the time and place. Now if you please, good day to you, sir.” He opened the door to let Mr. Brett out and the wet nurse in. “Duels—duels,” he grunted. “Has all the world gone mad?”

Mr. Brett, who had expected all manner of difficulties to be put in his way and had been fully prepared for failure and the consequent anger of Dr. Bunnion, could not help smiling with happy triumph at the ease of his success. It gave him unexpected confidence in himself and made him think that perhaps he possessed a more powerful personality than he'd supposed. He broke into a brisk trot as he made his way back to the school and his beloved Tizzy.

The world was suddenly a beautiful place and he seemed as light as the bright warm air. Seagulls flew like angels above him and he looked upward as if he was on the point of soaring among them. He did not see the man with the clubfoot who happened to be standing at the corner of the street.

“It is beginning,” muttered the inquiry agent, grimly noting Mr. Brett's rapid pace and triumphant smile. “The end is beginning. When the devil runs, can hell be far away?”

There was a coolness between Bostock and Harris. The delivering of the anonymous letter was partly to blame; the rest was on account of a bouquet of wild flowers Bostock wanted to give to Mary Harris, whom he particularly admired, as it was her birthday.

“Give 'em to her tomorrow,” Harris had said impatiently. “Another day won't matter.” He did not want Bostock, who was inkstained from writing the anonymous letter, appearing at his house on the same day as the letter itself.

“They'll have faded,” said Bostock obstinately.

“Who cares?” said Harris with more than a touch of irritation. Then, when he saw that Bostock looked offended, he instantly regretted his tone. He sensed that his friend was affected by that soft passion that he, Harris, knew to be as disrupting as it was unscientific. He smiled at his scowling friend who was grasping his bouquet like a weapon.

“I know how you feel, Bosty,” he murmured kindly. “You fancy you're in love with Mary.”

Bostock reddened. Harris was uncanny.

“But I'm afraid there's no such thing as what you call love, old friend.”

Bostock braced himself, and Harris continued. “It's only an instinct, old friend, nothing more than that. It's like—like blowing your nose. You have to do it, and you feel better when you've done it.”

Bostock stared mournfully at the bouquet he had so laboriously gathered. If Harris was right—and he always was—he should have got Mary a pocket handkerchief . . .

“We all have these instincts, Bosty,” went on Harris. “Generally we get them when we're thirteen or thereabouts. I'll be getting them myself any day now. You see a female and right away you want to have carnal knowledge of her.”

“Carnal knowledge?”

“Poke her,” explained Harris. “It's the law of nature, Bosty.”

Bostock thought of the wild, slender Miss Harris, and blushed to the roots of his soul. He looked down at the little forest all jeweled with tiny
blossoms that he was clutching. “Is that really all it is, Harris?” he asked sadly. “That's all, Bosty,” said Harris compassionately, and to his relief, Bostock let the flowers fall. Who'd have thought Mary would have so nearly come between them?

“Five minutes after six, Bosty” went on Harris, after a pause to allow his friend to bring his mind to the matter in hand. “That's the time to do it. Poke—er—push the letter under the door and then go like the wind.”

Bostock nodded and Harris held out his hand. Bostock hesitated.

“Old friend,” said Harris, “it all depends on you.” Bostock sighed and the friends shook hands.

Harris made a good deal of noise as he entered his house so that the time of his arrival should be generally known and not confused with the arrival of the letter. He went up to the nursery and engaged the wet nurse in conversation while she, poor soul, all but suffocated the black-haired baby under her shawl as she modestly tried to hide her breast from Harris's inquisitive gaze.

At five minutes after six Harris's heart began to beat violently. The time had come. He strained his ears, but he heard nothing. Bostock must have been as silent as the air.

“Well, that's all for now, you gutsy little darlin',” said the wet nurse, returning the baby to its cot and her breast to her gown. She nodded to Morgan and went downstairs. Harris followed her. He stared toward the front door. There was no letter. Dismay
seized Harris. Had Bostock deserted him? After all he'd said, had love really deprived him of his friend?

The wet nurse shuffled down the last stairs, when something white flew from under the door with tremendous force and vanished under her skirts. It had been the letter. Bostock, ever faithful to his friend, had kept his word, but resentment at the shattering of yet another illusion had caused him to be overstrong.

Dr. Harris, hearing the wet nurse in the hall, came out of his study to pay her. Harris the younger glared at the ragged hem of her gown. She took the money, lifted her dress to stow it away in her petticoat—and saw the letter.

She picked it up and gave it to the doctor. “It's yours, sir,” she said, and jingling slightly, she shuffled out of the house.

Dr. Harris opened the letter and read it. Harris watched his father's face in an agony of expectation, which, however, he concealed under a mild interest.

“W—what is it, Pa? Anything . . . important?”

The doctor frowned. “The impudence of it! Sending that wretched woman with their begging letters! Don't I do enough for charity as it is?” Wearily he showed his son the paper on which Bostock, after so many attempts, had at last revealed the whereabout of Adelaide. “Dear Dr. Harris,” he had written. “Think of the poorhouse.”

The doctor fumbled in his pockets. “Here, son,” he said. “Take this down to the poorhouse with my compliments.”

He gave the dazed Harris a handful of silver, crumpled up the letter and trudged upstairs to the nursery. Harris stared after him in an agony of rage and disbelief. There were tears in his eyes. Everything seemed against him, even his own father.

He left the house and slammed the door behind him as if he would shake his home to the ground. Though Bostock was ever a great comfort to him, he was glad that his friend was not at his side. Harris doubted whether he could have restrained himself from blaming Bostock for the horrible failure of the scheme. Bostock had pushed the letter so unnecessarily hard that if the back door had been open it would most likely have gone clean through the house. There was no doubt that everything now rested on Harris's shoulders, and he felt they were cracking.

Bitterly he counted up the money his distraught father had given him: nineteen shillings. In the old days, such a sum would have filled him with wonderment and joy. But now it weighed him down. He walked on toward the poorhouse while the sun, sinking in an irony of crimson, orange and gold, served only to deepen the private night of his despair.

He would have to give the money to the poorhouse. His father might meet Mr. Bonney, the keeper, at any time and mention it. But on the other hand, so large a sum as nineteen shillings would be sure to startle Mr. Bonney into mentioning it of his own accord. Then the affair of the letter would be bound to come out, and then everything else.

Harris moaned. Then he frowned. Then he half-smiled. Why hand over all the nineteen shillings? What was wrong with five? He paused and completed his smile. He rubbed his hands together. Mr. Bonney would accept five shillings gratefully and not think twice about it. Harris nodded shrewdly. All problems, however great, yielded to a little thought. Five from nineteen left fourteen shillings. A handsome sum. Harris brooded. Quite by chance he seemed to have hit on a remarkable way of making money. When the affair of Adelaide was cleared up, he and Bostock might work on a grander scale . . .

“Good evening, my young friend.”

Harris almost jumped out of his skin. The hateful Mr. Raven, who had been taking the evening air outside the Old Ship, suddenly accosted him.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” said the inquiry agent apologetically. “You must have been quite lost in thoughts. Were I a rich man, ha-ha! I'd offer you a penny for them.”

Harris smiled feebly.

“Come, let me guess. A young lady perhaps?” Mr. Raven gazed slyly down at his boot. “Are you on your way to a tryst?”

Harris laughed lightly. “Just to the poorhouse, sir. My pa asked me to give them some charity money.” Harris was honest enough to be truthful when he didn't see that it could do any harm. “A very charitable man, my pa.”

“Very,” agreed Mr. Raven, and waved the boy on his way. He watched him disappear into the
poorhouse, then shook his head and returned to the frontage of the Old Ship where he set about wondering if there was a space left for the poorhouse keeper in the frightful web of which Mr. Brett was the center and Adelaide Harris no more than a single, unimportant thread.