Grab Bag (12 page)

“These are all points to consider,” said Fox blandly. “And now let us ask ourselves who benefits the least.”

“Cui malo,”
interjected Gerald Potherton, much to Ermentine’s admiration.

“The
malo
is mine, naturally,” said Lord Ditherby-Stoat. “Unless the plans are recovered, I am a ruined man.”

“However, my brother is in any case a dead man,” rejoined Miss Twiddle sharply.

“My dear,” Lord Ditherby-Stoat turned to his wife, “might you not drop a hint to Twiddle that she oversteps herself?”

“She does not,” replied Lady Ditherby-Stoat. “Her logic is irrefutable.”

“There is also the matter of the defunct Silas Whipsnade,” Fox went on, “although strictly speaking it was not the loss of the plans that hastened his demise.”

“Then what was it?” demanded Ermentine.

“It was his rapacious greed,” the famous detective responded. “You see, Whipsnade had ferreted out that weighty secret which the late Percival Figgleton and the discreet Miss Twiddle had guarded so jealously for so many years. He planned not to guard it, but to exploit it to the hilt.”

“You mean more blackmail?” cried Hellespont.

“I do.”

“How dastardly!”

“And how dangerous. Whipsnade reckoned not with the primitive ferocity that lies beneath his intended victim’s suavely correct façade.”

All eyes turned toward Hellespont.

“Don’t look at me,” he drawled, essaying a light laugh. “I’m not all that correct.”

“Then it was Count Bratvuschenko,” exclaimed Mrs. Swiveltree, who appeared not yet to have grasped the import of those grotesque habiliments so recently discovered in the vanished guest’s bedroom. “One sensed the primitive ferocity merely from the way he attacked his soup. But where is he now?”

“If you will wait one moment, I shall bring him to you.”

Fox wheeled and ran lightly up the majestic staircase. In little more than the promised moment, the bearlike Bratvuschenko was back among them, glowering around in search of the brandy decanter.

“And now,” cried a merry voice, “I shall make him disappear again.”

With an airy gesture, the brown wig was lifted, the bushy beard detached. Behold, Augustus Fox stood before them!

“When I learned through dark and devious sources,” he explained, “that Silas Whipsnade was up to his old tricks at Haverings, I determined to safeguard my own unblemished reputation and foil his evil scheme by being on hand myself to ferret out whatever
miching mallecho
had brought him here. The true Count Bratvuschenko, who I may say owed me a little service for reasons I am not free to divulge, was only too happy to have me take his place while he remained in his secluded country seat poring over his chessboard and making notes for the novel he plans some day to write. I foxed you, did I not?”

“He is a veritable master of disguise,” ejaculated Gerald Potherton, in whom clear signs of dawning hero worship were now discernible.

“If the ladies will forgive me,” said Fox, “I shall also divest myself of this somewhat uncomfortable padded waistcoat. It spoils the drape of one’s coat. As does a bulky sheaf of papers, such as the plans for the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship. May I relieve you of them, Lord Ditherby-Stoat?”

Before anyone could make a move, the plans were in the hands of Augustus Fox. Amid the startled cries he calmly tucked them inside his own impeccably tailored garment.

“I have a hansom cab waiting. Within the hour, I shall have hied myself straight to Buck House and placed these documents in Her Majesty’s own hands. As for you, Lord Ditherby-Stoat, I fear the
cui malo
you thought to avoid by your stratagem has caught up with you. When you staged a cunning robbery as a pretext to drive your gold-mounted dagger into the most loyal heart that ever beat even as Figgleton was in the act of informing you that the plans were gone, you sealed your own fate.”

“How so?” cried Hellespont.

“For one thing,” replied Fox, “the hilt of the dagger bore His Lordship’s own monogram. No such slip would have occurred, of course, had you been able to rely on your accustomed guide and mentor, Lord Ditherby-Stoat. Few persons realized that the brain behind the Beaird-Wynnington coup, and in deed behind all your brilliant acts of statesmanship, was that of your elder cousin, the alleged Percival Figgleton, who was in fact the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat.”

“Good heavens, Honoria,” drawled Mrs. Swiveltree. “You married the wrong cousin.”

“Oh no,” replied Lady Ditherby-Stoat with her usual calm aplomb. “I married the right one. No doubt Mr. Fox will be able to explain.”

“I believe so,” said the great detective. “The original contretemps arose from the fact that the late Cedric Ditherby-Stoat, eldest son of the third Lord Ditherby-Stoat, was killed in the hunting field at the age of thirty-one, supposedly unmarried although not without issue. In fact, Cedric had been united in lawful wedlock seven years previously with the daughter of a publican in a neighboring village, by whom he had a son and a daughter, both of them quite legitimate but not recognized as such by Cedric’s parents because of their mother’s lowly origin. Upon Cedric’s death, therefore, the succession passed not to his son Percival, the rightful heir, but to Cedric’s younger brother, the present Lord Ditherby-Stoat. I may say in exculpation that I believe the present Lord Ditherby-Stoat to have been kept in ignorance of his nephew’s legitimacy until he was apprised of the truth by the late Silas Whipsnade not long since.”

“Bloody beggar wanted five hundred thousand pounds to hush it up,” whined Lord Ditherby-Stoat, from whom the mien of rank and dignity seemed already to be falling.

“To continue my painful narrative,” Fox went on, “the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat, though fully aware of his rights, was astute enough to realize he had no real hope of succeeding to the position that should have been his. However, the blood of the Ditherby-Stoats ran high in his veins. Rather than bring scandal upon the family by forcing himself, the grandson of a publican, into the public eye as the rightful claimant, he took the nobler course of dedicating himself to its service. Using a false name, he engaged himself to the household as boot boy and worked his way steadily up through the ranks until his obviously superior qualifications earned him, young as he was, the exalted position of butler and confidant to His False Lordship. Inspired by her brother’s example and aided by his increasing influence with the family, Percival’s younger sister also anonymously obtained a post here, as companion to that elderly dowager whose malign influence over her sons had been a primary factor in preventing Cedric from securing the rights of his own legitimate offspring. Entitled though she is to the dignity of a family member, she has meekly and dutifully endured the scorn and ignominy of a lowly paid companion. Miss Twiddle, I salute you.”

“How did you fathom my secret?” gasped the erstwhile drab and mousy underling.

“Elementary, my dear Miss Ditherby-Stoat, for thus I must henceforth style you. I noted the tearstains on your well-worn copy of
Oroonoko, of the Royal Slave.
Immediately, all was clear to me.”

It was clear to A. Lysander Hellespont, too. A new light dawning in his eyes, he bent low over Miss Ditherby-Stoat’s formerly careworn hand.

“But there is more,” said Fox. “Shall I go on, Lady Ditherby-Stoat?”

“You must, must you not?”

“Yes, I must. I believe the next chapter in our saga must have taken place when Lady Honoria, fourth daughter of the Earl of Cantilever, already betrothed to Lord Ditherby-Stoat, visited Haverings with her parents and the soi-disant Figgleton announced their arrival.”

“We exchanged but one glance,” said Lady Ditherby-Stoat in a gentle, wistful tone nobody had ever heard her use before, “and we knew. Later, under pretense of visiting the ladies’ cloakroom, I tiptoed down to the butler’s pantry. There I learned that Figgleton was the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat. There we plighted our troth. There we planned what was clearly the only thing to be done. The following day, under pretext of visiting my old nanny, I slipped away to a tiny church in an unfashionable street and married my darling Percival.”

“And after that you had the gall to marry me?” cried Lord Ditherby-Stoat.

“Ours has been no true marriage. You went through the ceremony under a false title and false pretensions. And I kept my fingers crossed as I said my vows.”

“And you had a terrible headache on the wedding night,” Ditherby-Stoat added bitterly. “And you’ve had one ever since. I’ve always wondered how we managed to come up with Ermentine.”

“You had nothing to do with Ermentine’s birth. She is the legitimate daughter of my beloved late husband, Percival Ditherby-Stoat. As such, she is now also the true heiress to Haverings.”

“Then where does that leave me? Honoria, what shall I do?”

“Obviously, Edmund, there is only one thing for you to do.” She opened her evening bag and handed him a small, pearl-handled revolver such as might properly be carried by the fourth daughter of any nobleman. “I suggest the library, and you might take a footman with you this time. One does get so weary of ringing bells.”

THIS WAS NOT ONLY
my first story about James Carter-Harrison and his colleague Bill Williams, but also the first story I ever had published in a national magazine.
Yankee
ran it in the December 1963 issue as “Falling in Love with Arabella.”

I never did feel really comfortable with Carter-Harrison. I just wasn’t in his class. I mean, I’m a Fellow in Gastroenterology and my mother thinks I’m the Mayo brothers, but actually I’m just one of the boys. Fellows, I mean. But Carter-Harrison is a Brain.

Everybody knew it from the day he entered the Research Center. Nobody could tell anybody what he was working on, but we were sure that when he finally published, it would be something big. So I suppose I was flattered when he started walking from the lab to the subway with me after work. Not that we had much in common, but we were the only two who didn’t have cars, and I guess even a Brain needs some sort of human companionship.

He was a lot older than I. Almost forty, I’d say. When a man gets that old in Boston without forming a meaningful relationship with somebody or other, you can bet there’s something askew somewhere. In his case, I think it was just preoccupation with his work. He didn’t seem to have any social life whatever except what he got from our nightly strolls. When I realized this, I began trying to make them as interesting as I could. Had I but known, I’d have kept my mouth shut.

The hospital we work out of is in a pretty crummy section. “It’s hard to believe,” I remarked one night in early December as we passed a Southern Fried Pizzeria, “that this was once the classiest residential area in the city.”

“Was it?” said Carter-Harrison with a polite imitation of interest.

“Yes, and not so long ago, either. This old guy I was running a GI series on once told me he used to be coachman to a rich family who lived here. The place was so exclusive they had big iron gates at the head of the street that used to be locked every night to keep the rabble out.”

“They left them open once too often,” snarled the Brain as a grubby kid on roller skates slammed into him and tried to pick his pocket. “That’s interesting. Really interesting.”

This was the first time he’d shown any genuine enthusiasm for a remark of mine. I embroidered the theme. “Don’t you wish you could see the place as it was then, with the carriages hauling up to the doors and the girls swishing downstairs in their bustles?”

“It was an entirely different way of life, certainly. A gracious, ordered existence where a man could do his work without being under constant pressure to produce results.”

He practically snorted those last words. I was surprised. Nobody had been pressuring him as far as I knew, but maybe I didn’t know. Anyway, he got off on some train of thought and didn’t speak again all the way to the station.

In fact, that was the last I saw of him for a week. He hung a
Busy
sign on his door and just stayed inside. I wouldn’t bust in on a Brain, of course, but I did wonder what he was up to. Then White Fang, my department head, started wondering what I was up to, so I buckled down to my ulcers and more or less forgot about him.

It was the following Tuesday night when he finally emerged. He stuck his head in at my door around half-past five, said, “Coming, Williams?” just as usual, and I came. He didn’t say much else until we’d got to where the avenue makes a sort of circle with a fenced-in lot full of beer bottles and wastepaper in the middle. Then he stopped and looked at me in a funny sort of way.

“Do you recall what we talked about when we were last here?”

“Sure.” I combed my gray matter frantically. “Oh, you mean about this being such a swanky place once.”

“Yes, and you said you wished you could see it as it used to be.”

“So?”

“Here.” He pulled a little box out of his pocket. It had something like half a jumprope attached to each side. “Take a handle.”

“What’s this?”

“Did you ever read
The Time Machine?”

“Oh brother,” I said with my usual tact and savoir-faire.

“It’s perfectly safe,” he said earnestly. “I tested it on myself last night. It won’t put us back more than seventy years or so, and the effect wears off in half an hour. Just keep hold of that handle and you’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t scared, you understand. I merely assumed all that gray matter had jelled. Better humor him, I thought, so I grabbed the handle. “Okay, I’ll swing, you jump.”

He grasped the other handle. The box swung between us, suspended by its two wires, and began to buzz. I braced myself for a shock, but not for the one I got. As I stood there feeling like a nut, my eyes suddenly blurred. I blinked, and opened them in another world.

Another Boston, anyway. The chainlink fence around the traffic island had vanished. It really was a little park now, and the avenue was cobblestoned instead of blacktopped. The houses all looked spruce, the shops were gone. And sure enough, a barouche with a pair of matched brown horses was pulling up in front of us. When the coachman jumped down to open the door, he almost knocked me over.