Rex Stout (21 page)

“For the advantages, take the personal ones first, and we can confine ourselves to yours, because mine are obvious and you’re not interested in them anyway. You would acquire all of the social conveniences of marriage and would assume an irreducible minimum of obligation, except financially, and you can well afford that. You would be free to give or to withhold. You could satisfy your maternal instinct under your own roof, with objects as temporary or as permanent as you cared to make them. You would have my intellect at your service when you wanted it, with the assurance that it would not be thrust upon you when you didn’t. You would have constantly within reach a man who adores you more humbly, and at the same time with more true pride and intelligence, than any other man you have known or are likely to know. I met you only a year ago, when I left my job in a western college to accept the offer from Columbia. I adored you, utterly and passionately, the first day I saw you. I worship you as I worship my work—as the justification of life and the only acceptable evidence of pure truth and beauty in the human world. And you have enriched me; esthetically, I was born the day I saw you.…”

Sylvia could not remove her gaze from his pale intent eyes; the rest of his face she did not see. She made herself speak: “Don’t go on … please. Please don’t.”

Zimmerman’s hand fluttered and dropped to the grass again. “All right. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I mention my personal feeling for you only that you may know, first, that it exists, and second, that it can be articulate if ever it should have the good fortune to be welcome. Otherwise I promise positively that you shall never be annoyed with it—as you have not during the past
year. Only, as I said, it may amuse you—it might even some day be of service to you—to know that it is constantly within reach.—Another personal advantage to you—I hope you would consider it so—would be your assurance that some day your husband will be a famous and respected man. I am destined to dominance in my field. I am sorry I can’t prove that; I can only assert it. I have precisely those qualities—temperamental, intuitive, and analytical—which are needed to grasp the probe that psychology is sinking, like a dagger of knowledge, into the human brain, and to sink it to new depths. I also have a rigorous and passionate determination to perform that job. It was my only passion, before I saw you. But don’t be apprehensive about that—my passion for you can be controlled. I can control anything that is sensible to the operations of my brain.”

He disregarded a bee which lit momentarily on a strand of his stringy hair limp on his forehead. “So much for the main obstacles and the personal advantages. I want you to consider now the biggest advantage of all, to society, to science, to all men and women alive and yet to be born. Martin professes not to know the amount of your fortune, but I understand it is between three and five million dollars. You could keep a third of it for your personal needs—mine are negligible—and with the remainder we can establish a psychological research laboratory with me in charge. On account of your total ignorance of the matter, it is difficult for me to give you an idea of what that would mean. Locating it here in New York, in roomy but inexpensive quarters, we would have an inexhaustible supply of material for experiment—men and women, children, babies—to be hired cheaply and discarded at will. We would not need to spend more than 5% of our capital for original equipment, which would leave us an ample income for development and current expenses. I have already prepared in detail a proposed program for three years’ independent research and experiment, with an estimate of the cost, and the probable results, under my direction, are absolutely staggering. Within ten years, at the most, our laboratory would be recognized as the center of authority, and of hope, by psychologists throughout the world. The ultimate effect on human society, on the daily lives of men
and women, would be incalculable. It would increase their knowledge, their happiness, and their effective functioning as the most highly developed of organisms. And you would have made it possible. You would have furnished the fuel that kept the fire going. Not only that, you may, if you want, take part in it. I have completed an outline for a series of experiments with babies—based on an entirely new concept of the relation of heredity to environment—which you could manage perfectly under my general supervision. I would like to go over it with you, it is fascinating. You could handle the babies perfectly, after you had acquired a sense of the strictness of scientific discipline. That one outline would take you about two years, at ten hours a day. You would have not only constant association with twenty or thirty babies—I believe I settled on twenty-five—but also the deeply satisfying knowledge of the importance, the vital significance to all mankind, of your work.”

Sylvia had been, for minutes, weakly shaking her head. She had, in spite of everything, a point of conviction within her, well buried, that some day she would laugh at this scene—but that would be after she had pretty well forgotten the piercing intentness of those water-pale eyes. She stammered at them, “But I … I mustn’t let you go on this way. Really. I’m not at all that kind of girl—the serious worthwhile kind. I’m as selfish as the dickens. Oh, maybe I could give you some money to start a laboratory … six months from now, when I get it.…”

Zimmerman shook his head. “That wouldn’t do. You would give only a comparatively small amount; you wouldn’t turn loose anything like two-thirds of your fortune when it came down to it; and I would have no assurance that future needs would be taken care of. But the main objection … apparently I haven’t made myself clear. The laboratory would be merely one of the advantages of our marriage. I am young, and in any event I shall have a career. But it will be only half a career unless you share it. It will be a monster with brains and nerves and bones, but no heart. That is poetry. A year ago I couldn’t have said anything as unscientific as that, but when I met you I learned that there is not one truth, but two: a truth that
lights the way, and a truth that warms us. I never felt the need for warmth before, just as a man born deaf doesn’t feel the need for music. I mean now, specifically, merely the warmth of your presence near me. I can be frugal—though God knows your presence would not be frugality.”

He paused. He sighed, and muttered at her, “That’s my proposal. I want to talk you into it, not out of it.”

Sylvia thought, the poor guy. The poor, poor guy.

He said, “I did poor work last spring. All summer I have been no good.” He sounded all at once, startlingly, ferocious. A ferocity pale like his eyes. “I must clear my mind at any cost. I have work to do.”

Sylvia looked at him, and her eyes widened, because she had never had to bother about concealing her feelings in obedience to any necessity other than that imposed by good manners. So, when the thought came to her and she accepted its plausibility, she blurted it at him: “Steve Zimmerman! Is this what you went to see P. L. about yesterday morning? Is this what you talked to him about?”

He looked at her in surprise, but after only an instant’s hesitation he shook his head. “No. I didn’t mention it. I wasn’t fool enough to mention it to him.”

“Then what did you go there for? You won’t tell those men. You won’t talk about it. What did you mention?”

Zimmerman shook his head again. “I can’t tell you.” He frowned. “You’re changing the subject. I know I’m making my proposal to you when you’re under the first real stress you’ve ever had to bear. I can’t help it; it’s my opportunity, and I must seize it.”

“But I want to know. Won’t you tell me?”

“No.” He was emphatic. “Some day, perhaps, if you still want to hear it, if we are married …”

Sylvia shivered involuntarily. Not at, directly and specifically, the idea of Steve Zimmerman for a husband; it was merely the state of her nerves. She said, “I couldn’t ever marry you. I told you, I’m selfish.”

“That’s all right. So am I. Even from the selfish standpoint, I’ve shown you the advantages—”

“No. Please.” Sylvia got up from the stone. “I don’t like—there’s no use.” She moved a step.

“Wait a minute.” Zimmerman, still cross-legged on the grass, did not tilt his head to look up as she stood. “I have put all this … with restraint. But I can plead with you—I can display the most acute suffering for your compassion—I can show you the most vital necessity—”

“Don’t! Please don’t.” She moved again.

“Wait,” Zimmerman demanded. “Are you refusing me on account of Martin?”

“I am engaged to Martin.”

“But is it on account of him—”

The sentence hung in the air, unfinished. Sylvia was gone. With no concession at all to good manners, and no compassion for the torment of unrequited love, she simply went.

Zimmerman’s back was toward the direction she took, and he didn’t turn to watch her go. His head bent forward, his chin on his chest, his lids dropped to give the pale eyes a rest, and the only visible movement was his right index finger slowly poking in and out of a beetle hole as his hand, propping him, nestled in the grass.

Sylvia, reaching the top end of the flagstone steps—for the rock garden was at the foot of a declivity—looked from right to left indecisively. Would Martin be out of the card room? Would he be out of the house? She must know what had happened. Would she tell him of Steve’s incredible proposal? No, it would only upset him and exasperate him … but she knew she would tell him. Anyway, for months now she had thought that it didn’t do Martin any good, his close association with that mental morbid freak, just because they had been friends before Steve had gone out to his job in the western college.…

She went past the filbert thicket, around by the rose garden, but it was empty. On all the spreading slope there was no one in sight except a trooper in uniform on the east terrace. To avoid the necessity of ignoring him in passing, she struck off to the right, and at the top of the slope circled the rear of the house. The kitchen girl Ellen, the cook’s helper, was there struggling with a bag of something, and Sylvia saw that her eyes were red from weeping and thought, “She can cry and work at the same time and I can’t do either one.” Then, crossing the drive to the garage,
to the west lawn, she saw that two chairs near the tennis court were occupied, and headed for them.

It was not Martin; it was Dol Bonner and Len Chisholm. Sylvia hesitated, then went on to them. Len, who had a drink in his hand and provisions for more in a bottle and pitcher on the table, got up and pulled a chair around. Sylvia shook her head and demanded:

“Where’s Martin?”

Dol told her, “I guess in the house. I didn’t see him come out after we left the card room.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. They showed him the gloves and Martin said they were his. He put them in the pocket of his jacket when he changed yesterday, and took the jacket to the tennis court, and later brought it over here. The last he remembers seeing the gloves was in his room when he put them in the jacket. So anyone might have got them. Martin did very well, especially with that blooded colonel. I think Martin went back to the study. I’d leave him alone a while if I were you, unless you feel you should go and smooth his brow. I went to the vegetable garden with the sergeant, and then I saw Len was down here drinking again, so I came down to tell him to stop. He responded magnificently by thickening his drink.”

Sylvia felt her heart a little less heavy. She sat down on the edge of the chair which Len had pulled around. “What did you want the fingerprints for?”

“You heard me tell them. The watermelon.”

“What did you want with Janet?”

“You’re too inquisitive. Face powder. I was out. She uses Valery’s Trente-trois.”

“Liar. It wasn’t like that. Tell me.”

Dol put her finger to her lips. “Not with Len here. He’s in no condition to keep a secret. I’ll tell you some day.”

Len growled, “No matter what condition I was in, I wouldn’t be able to remember what anybody wanted with Janet. Unless for a meat grinder. She might make good sausage.”

Sylvia said, “All right, if you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you something. I suppose I shouldn’t, but I tell you everything. I have just had a proposal of marriage.”

Len growled again, “I know, that trooper that chews gum.”

“Shut up, Len.” Dol knew Sylvia’s face. She asked it, “Who?”

“Steve Zimmerman.”

Len spilled some of his drink. Dol gasped.

“What! He … seriously?”

“Yes. Very. The idea was for him and me to get married and take a couple of million dollars and start a psychological laboratory. He says he is passionate about his work and his career, and I … I am esthetically all right. I am to help out by experimenting with babies. You can’t laugh at it either. Even—even if we felt like laughing.”

Dol’s eyes were narrowed. She muttered, “Pathological. He’s unbalanced.”

Sylvia shook her head. “You wouldn’t think so if you heard him. He covered everything: his friendship with Martin—he disposed of that—his physical shortcomings, the certainty that he will be a famous man, my maternal instinct—the devil. Here comes one of those confounded cops. Now what do they want? My God, Dol, won’t this ever end?”

“It will, Sylvia dear. What you can’t jump you have to straddle. Quit biting your lip in two.”

The trooper approached. “Mr. Chisholm? They want you in there.”

“Me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell ’em to write me a letter.” Len reached for the bottle, poured another inch in his glass, and added a dash of water from the pitcher. “Tell ’em returned undelivered, party has moved.” He arose with the glass in his hand and backed off. “Excuse me, ladies, I don’t want to miss the next act, they say it’s the best.” He followed the trooper, in long strides.

Dol looked after him, and shrugged. She turned and demanded, not at all as a young lady ready for gossip, “Tell me about it, Sylvia. What did he say?”

At ten o’clock that Sunday night the small room which served as an inside office at the Station H barracks of the state police, three miles from Birchhaven on Route 19, was filled with tobacco smoke, tension, conflicting theories, and half a dozen men. The bulky one on the wooden bench, chewing at a cigar in the side of his mouth, was Inspector Cramer of the New York Homicide Bureau; beside him was Maguire of Bridgeport, looking sleepy but indomitable. A nondescript trooper leaned against the door jamb. Colonel Brissenden, still miraculously elegant as to uniform and intransigent as to demeanor, sat erect at one side of a small table, and across from him was Sherwood, looking harried and weary but obstinate. The middle-aged man threatening to go bald, slim and saturnine with slanting eyes, was the attorney-general of the state, E. B. Linnekin, who had just driven from a Vermont week-end at sixty miles an hour to fend disaster, share kudos, and retrieve justice.