Part 18

“It doesn’t make any difference how dreadful it may be. She’ll feel she’s got to see it. Oh, damn!”

Then he moved over to the door of the closet. “Fanny,” he shouted, “we’re going back to the library. If you don’t come out inside of five minutes, we’ll break down the door. Now what a fool thing that was to say,” he murmured, precisely as if we were to blame for his words.

A slender figure in white Spanish lace became suddenly manifest among us. “Mrs. Allis, can I telephone?” Mrs. Conway asked softly.

“No, I’m afraid you can’t.” Maud’s answer was grim. “Fanny Medford has locked herself into the telephone closet with the first sheet of that wretched stuff.”

“Then will someone go out and telephone for me”--she gave the number--“and ask them to send my car at once?”

“Ben can telephone from the extension upstairs,” Maud suggested sullenly.

“Oh, thank you. I wish he would.”

Allis turned suddenly upon Mrs. Conway. “I can’t pretend that, as a host, I’m proud of my hospitality. But don’t you think it would be kinder all round if we didn’t break up? We might be able to get that poor thing out of her hysteria if we all stuck about and did our best?”

“I have no intention of going before Mrs. Medford does, Mr. Allis,” was the very quiet reply. “I thought it might be a good thing to have the car waiting. Mayn’t I go up and telephone, myself? I think Mr. Allis ought to stay here.”

Maud nodded. “It’s in my room.” And Mrs. Conway moved upstairs. She leaned over the stair-rail on the first landing and spoke to Fenwick. “Don’t destroy those other pages. If she still wants to see them, she’d better--much better.”

“You don’t know what’s in them,” Fenwick answered. Nor did he, but he evidently considered they were not to be lightly treated.

“It doesn’t make any difference what’s in them. Not even if it were the Black Mass.” She went on, up.

We went back into the library then, and Allis stood, watch in hand, waiting. He was beginning to mean it, about breaking down the door, I could see. Allis had had a good glimpse of the first page. Fenwick had seen a little. None of the rest of us knew anything but those three first words like a telephone call: “Jack Hilles speaking.”

Before Allis moved, Mrs. Medford came slowly through the drawing room, holding the sheet of paper very carefully in her hand. A little behind, Mrs. Conway’s white form gently stalked her.

Fanny Medford’s poor little head was held very high. “I suppose you people have read the rest--and doubtless Mr. Fenwick has told you what is in this.” She tapped the paper.

“Not one of us knows anything or has read a word,” Maud Allis declared.

Allis frowned. “That’s not quite true, Maud. I saw a little--a few sentences--of what Mrs. Medford took with her. I daresay Fenwick saw as much. But no one has seen all of it except Mrs. Melford, and no one has seen any of the other sheets. That is the exact state of the case.”

“You will kindly give me the rest of the writing,” Mrs. Medford went on, to Fenwick.

But Mrs. Conway stepped forward and slipped the sheets from Fenwick’s grasp. He let her take them, though he looked at Allis anxiously. The situation was becoming Mrs. Conway’s.

“I have them, you see.” She turned to Mrs. Medford. “And if you insist, _you_ shall have them. Of course I wish you would let me destroy them all, here and now. It isn’t true, you know, that the dead communicate. They don’t.”

Mrs. Medford was shaking, but her voice was still her own. “They do. I know they do. Jack talked to me through Mrs. Weale, who’s dead now. But not this kind of thing. It’s wicked, it’s beastly, what you’ve done!” she cried to Fenwick.

“But, Mrs. Medford, I don’t even know what’s there--except the first sentences. I never knew your brother. I don’t believe this stuff, of course.”

“Nobody believes anything, Fanny.” Allis corroborated him. “This sort of thing has been shown up, time and again, for the most arrant trash. It’s just our bad luck that something got written that was upsetting for you.”

“You believe it--you know you do.” Her voice was half a choke in her throat.

To my consternation, Allis did not deny it, at once and with passion. “Fanny, don’t be absurd. You know perfectly well what my attitude to these matters is--purely scientific skepticism.”

“I say that you believe those things of Jack. As for Mr. Fenwick”--she disposed of him then and there with a look of loathing--“I leave him to the rest of you.”

Maud Allis followed her out of the room.

Allis took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Any one of you men feel like seeing her home?” he asked. “Fenwick and I would seem to be out of the running.”

Mrs. Conway put out her hand. “Good-night, Mr. Allis. Of course I’m going to take her home. What did you suppose I ordered my car for?” She did not bid the rest of us good-night, but she seemed to address us all in parting. “Naturally, I don’t know what’s in these papers. But I take it, it is something pretty bad--about her brother. Mrs. Medford may have to see them, since I promised her; but I guarantee you they shall be destroyed without my, or anyone’s else, reading them. It’s all nonsense, of course, but you see she half believes. Truly, I’m the best person to see her through, because I can explain it.”

“It’s just some foolish trick of muscles--and re-arranging all the words in the dictionary,” burst in Fenwick, hotly.

“Yes.” She smiled. “But _what_ foolish trick? That’s what you can’t explain to her. And I can. You may not think my explanation is correct, but at least it begins at the beginning and sees you through to the end. That is why I shall try to convince her. You open-minded people can’t.”

“Even so,” Allis said, “I don’t see how you’re going to manage it.”

She had turned to go, but she stopped and answered him. “I’ve this advantage, you see. You can’t tell her _why_ it happened. I can. Malice accounts for everything.”

“There’s not an ounce of malice in this crowd,” Carter remarked.

“No, not among us. But the things you let in to your foolish minds are all malice. Believe me, they’ve had a ripping time to-night. They have to take what they can find--yes. It’s the way they use it that counts.”

“But suppose whatever it is were true,” Miss Ford murmured. “Suppose it was her brother, after all, getting through.”

“I’ve told you the dead can’t get through--not the real dead. It’s only spirits pretending.”

“You’ll never get her to believe that,” Allis said ruefully. “None of us could believe that.”

“Pardon me, I could,” Mrs. Conway threw back. “And if I can make Mrs. Medford believe it, too, it will be the best way out of the mess you’ve made.”

“Good luck go with you,” he called after her. But he seemed dazed.

When Maud Allis came back, Miss Ford made her adieux, and Carter left with her. They had been, from first to last, outsiders, and perhaps it was the most tactful thing they could have done. I prepared to follow them, and Maud Allis, saying good-night to them, bade me good-night, too.

“I’ve got to see Nora,” she said. “I promised her I would before she went to bed. I meant to cut out from bridge. Probably I shall see you again, Mr. Fenwick. Sorry you have to go, Mr. Gregory.” There was certainly no urge to stay, in her voice. She was more done up than she owned. Yet she had not seen those sheets that Fenwick had written--any more than I had, or Mrs. Conway, or Genevieve Ford, or Carter.

I let Carter and Miss Ford get away a little in front of me, thinking that they were best by themselves, in the fellowship of their detachment from it all. Whatever had happened to the rest of us had left them unscathed. They had not been touched, apparently, by the episode, except to see that Mrs. Medford’s exit was a cue for them to break up the party. I lighted a cigarette in the vestibule, and craned my neck to see them turn the corner. It was jerked back by a clutch on my collar, and I dropped the cigarette.

“Come back in here, you idiot!” said Allis in my ear. “Did you really think you were going?”

Yes, I really had thought so; but I went in again.

I found, when I reached the library (Allis locked the door behind us) that he had furnished Fenwick with a precious drink. He offered me none, and was taking nothing himself. Whiskey is medicine, in these days.

“Fenwick and I need some one else to sit in with us,” Allis declared. “I may have to tell Maud later. That’s neither here nor there. I’m glad those two young people had the sense to go. If they hadn’t, I’d have kicked them out.”

“Well, of course, I’m eaten alive with curiosity,” I admitted. “Only it all sounded like the sort of thing that wouldn’t be mentioned again unless necessary. I never saw a word of the stuff, remember.”

“I saw precious little of it, and Fenwick here saw no more than I did.” Allis began to walk about with his hands in his pockets. “You can see the effect it has had on Fenwick.”

Fenwick’s head was buried in his hands. “I wrote the damned stuff. That’s what gets me.” I saw why Allis had fetched whiskey for him.

“We aren’t going to quote it for your benefit--even if we could,” went on Allis. “But you can take it from us that it was unmitigated filth. We judge by sample.”

“Then why did you give the rest of it to those women?” I shouted. “Why didn’t you burn up what you had your hands on, at least?”

“Easy, now, easy.” But Allis was troubled. He made an eloquent gesture over Fenwick’s bowed head. “We practically had to do what Mrs. Conway said. I believe she _is_ the person to deal with Fanny Medford. Evil spirits are the best way out--if she can take it. And Mrs. Conway is a clever woman. But we three have got to sift the matter. It seemed to be autobiographical, by the way--statement of things done in the past. Buck up, Fenwick. It’s more my fault than yours.”

“Your fault? You didn’t even write ‘Ask Fenwick,’” our friend retorted. The whiskey was strengthening him a little.

Allis paid no attention. “I take it for granted that none of us now present subscribes to Mrs. Conway’s theory. Very well. That’s that. Fenwick wrote automatically a lot of stuff of which he and I have seen a little. It all purported to be Jack Hilles speaking, and on that basis it was Jack Hilles very much giving himself away. Of course, it wasn’t Jack Hilles any more than it was the Secretary of State. Mrs. Conway is right, at least, when she says the dead don’t communicate.”

“Then this kind of thing just flowers naturally out of the rich soil of my mind, I suppose?” Fenwick asked sarcastically.

Allis smiled faintly. “I wouldn’t say that. But you’ve knocked about the world more than most of us, and you’ve seen more than your share of exotic rottenness. Gregory and I would have had to go out and hunt for it. You’ve had it thrust upon your notice. If your subconscious stores it up, it isn’t your fault.”

“But what on earth should make me drag out horrors and attribute them to a man I never laid eyes on, who died fighting for his country in the Argonne?”

“That,” said Allis deliberately, “is where I come in.”

“You?” We both exclaimed.

Allis leaned against the chimney-piece, his hands still in his pockets. “Well, yes. Of course Jack Hilles’ name was bound to appear if any name appeared--after the way Fanny had gone on. But if that sort of thing was dragged out of you, about Hilles, instead of nice, sweet, comforting things, it was probably because my mind was stronger than Fanny Medford’s.”

“Do you mean that you were thinking that kind of thing about Hilles all the time?” Fenwick queried.

“No, I wasn’t _thinking_ those things about him,” Allis answered slowly. “I merely _knew_ those things about him. That is--I never knew he did anything so bad as what was written there, but I knew he was a bad lot.”

“Then why didn’t you write the stuff?”

“Like Mrs. Conway, I’m not open-minded. I disbelieve it too utterly. I’m prejudiced. But I don’t doubt my knowledge acted telepathically on your more sensitive--what shall I say?--mental mechanism. It’s all suggestion. Mrs. Medford involuntarily suggests Jack Hilles to you, and I involuntarily suggest the kind of person I knew him to be.”

We were silent for a moment.

“It’s hideous, all the same,” I said finally. “He’s dead, after all--in the Argonne.”

“But not fighting for his country,” Allis remarked quietly. “He was shot--for other reasons. I’ve no particular business to know that for a fact, but I do. Fanny Medford never knew the worst of Jack Hilles, but she had no illusions about him until he went into the war. Then he became a hero. When he was ‘killed in the Argonne’--which is all _she_ knows about it--he was _a fortiori_ a hero; a super-hero, if you like. You may have noticed that Fanny isn’t exactly impersonal in her attitude to life.”

He went on, after a pause. “I hope no one saw anything in my expression.... I was rather shaken by the glimpse I got. I never thought even Jack Hilles went so far as that. I wonder if Fanny saw. She accused me of believing it all. She must have meant she thought I believed it on the score of Fenwick’s automatic writing. I believed it on the score of knowing that Hilles was capable of anything. And that, I perhaps didn’t conceal sufficiently--and all of it--I’m banking heavily on Mrs. Conway to explain.”

“I still don’t see why I had to write the miserable stuff,” argued Fenwick--though he seemed a little more at ease than he had been.

“Well, I can’t tell you that,” Allis replied. “I’m inclined to believe that Mrs. Conway is wrong about people’s not being, more or less, ‘psychic.’ Certainly, even she would have to admit that some are more sensitive, readier vehicles than others. It looks to me as though you were a corker, Fenwick!”

Fenwick brooded for a time in silence, while Allis and I smoked. At last he spoke. “No, it’s too queer. Evil spirits would explain everything, but I haven’t gone back to the Middle Ages yet. You try to explain it, Allis, by arranging an intricate system of mental telephone wires--installed in an instant, ready for the emergency. That may be accurate, but it’s extremely complicated. Too complicated, I’d say. I’m not contradicting you, you understand. But for myself, I usually take the line of least resistance.” He rose and faced us. His fingers twitched a little as he, in turn, lighted a cigarette.

“Meaning--?” Allis queried.

“Meaning that if Jack Hilles was the kind of person you say he was, the easiest place for that sort of screed to have come from is--Jack Hilles.”

Allis’s lips folded themselves firmly. “If you choose to admit the supernatural hypothesis, I suppose it _is_ easy. I was ruling out impossibilities.”

“The fact that you haven’t proved a thing possible doesn’t mean that you’ve proved it impossible, does it? How about you, Gregory?” Fenwick turned to me.

I threw up my hands. “Oh, I’m with Allis. It sounds queer and far-fetched and all, but anything is more reasonable than believing the dead communicate in that way. Even Mrs. Conway is more reasonable.”

“Well, I wish to God they had rigged up their wireless on Allis’s roof instead of mine!” Fenwick exploded. He turned his back on us and walked over to a dark window.

I tried to be judicial. “If Allis was thinking about the sort of creature Jack Hilles really was, that in itself accounts for the telepathy business.”

Allis glared at me. “I wasn’t thinking of Jack Hilles. I knew he was a very bad lot, but I wasn’t thinking about it--not at all. I was wondering if Carter and Genevieve Ford would pull it off. And, anyhow, I couldn’t have thought that kind of thing about Hilles. It just wouldn’t naturally have occurred to me. Whereas, it might have, to Fenwick, with his background.”

* * * * *

Ben Allis stopped, suddenly, and I felt the blood in my body, for an instant, back up in its channels. For just as Allis finished speaking, Fenwick drew back from his window and crumpled up against the sofa. No, he did not faint. He was, rather, at bay there, against the world; against Allis and me, who rushed to him at once. I did not try to read that face, though it shouted at me silently. I turned my head away. “Damn you all, damn you all!” Fenwick’s white lips were saying. “And I thought I’d got rid of it forever. Oh, damn you both!” Yet he did not seem to be standing outside his own curse.

Fenwick roused himself at the sound of a knock on the library door, and we faced about. The knock saved us three from something pretty awful.

It was Maud Allis, and in her hand she carried a ouija-board. “I found Nora playing with this thing,” she said; “and after to-night it was more than I could bear. Will you please burn it up now--so I can see it burn?”

“You bet I will!” Allis broke it over his knee, and went to the fire which had almost died out.

With one eye on Fenwick, slowly, very slowly, composing himself to a normal posture and a normal expression, with a sense that I must keep Maud off him, I drew her away in the direction of the door. “I hope”--and I laid my hand on her wrist--“the thing hasn’t been worrying Nora. She didn’t get any echoes, did she?”

“Oh dear, no. It had just been writing foolishness--probably the kind of foolishness you would expect to come out of Nora’s subconscious.”

“Nothing about Jack Hilles?” I tried to laugh.

“I should hope not! Betty Dane’s cousin, they’re all in love with; and their matinée heroes; and their school commencement. But I’ve put her to bed and taken it away. I will not have my niece ouija-ing.”

Ouija was now burning brightly above the Cape Cod lighter. Ben Allis called to his wife. “Maud, do get a taxi round at once for Fenwick. He’s tired and doesn’t want to walk.”

“Certainly, I will. Did you people come to any conclusion?”

“Ben has the right of it, I’m sure. Telepathy.” I spoke quite loud. “He’ll tell you all about it. We’re going.”

Maud went off to the telephone.

Fenwick’s voice cut in. “Thanks for thinking of the taxi, Allis. I believe I do want one. Good-night.”

“Shall I come along with you?” I asked, thinking of Mrs. Conway’s brave support of Fanny Medford.

Allis frowned, and Fenwick, though he had got himself in hand, seemed to cringe a little before the frown. “No, thanks. I’m going straight to bed. It’s needless to say, I suppose, that this thing shall go no further, as far as I am concerned. I can’t say it has been a pleasant evening, but it has been interesting. It’s funny, isn’t it”--he spoke rapidly, but carefully--“that a party of friends can react so differently? Mrs. Conway thinks it’s evil spirits; I think Hilles did get through; and you and Allis think it was all communicated from Allis’s subconscious to mine. But we all hope that Mrs. Conway will convince Mrs. Medford.”

No; he could evidently take care of himself now. And he obviously wanted to be alone. Mrs. Allis, returning, rallied him as she said good-night.

“Your taxi is there already, I think, Mr. Fenwick. What do you think of Belshazzar’s letter _now_? I’m sorry you had to get the letter.”

It was all right for Maud to carry things off lightly--probably she felt it was her duty--but it didn’t help Allis and me so much as she doubtless hoped.

“I think I can promise never to meddle with this sort of thing again,” he said gravely. “I’m convinced it was the real thing. Your husband thinks he was responsible. He’ll explain to you.”

Allis answered the plea that sounded faintly in Fenwick’s voice. “Yes, Maud shall have my telepathy theory. I think she’ll agree. Maud, do go to the door with Fenwick. There’s no fender here, and I don’t like to leave ouija.”

Maud Allis, as you may have made out, was a good wife who never argued an absurdity if her husband perpetrated it. She preceded Fenwick to the hall.

Allis gripped my hand. “I shall tell Maud exactly what I said. You’ll tell nobody anything.”

“Of course not. For Mrs. Medford’s sake, if nothing else.”

Allis relaxed his grip. “Yes--and Fenwick’s, too. I’ve been fond of him for a long time. Perhaps he’ll never give himself away again.”

“Perhaps not,” I agreed. “Asia is a large continent. He may come to believe it was Hilles communicating, you know.”

“Well, I rather hope he does. Fenwick’s got to live. But you and I don’t believe it.”

“No, we don’t.”

“It’s queer,” Allis mused; “you and I are the only ones of the crowd who know what happened; and the one thing we are most anxious for is that everyone concerned--even Fenwick himself--should be convinced of some explanation we know is wrong. We want Mrs. Medford to believe Mrs. Conway; I want Maud to believe what I said here a while ago; and I even want Fenwick to believe that the dead communicate. We’re a scientific lot, aren’t we?”

“I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather believe any of those things than believe what I do,” I said grimly. I remembered Fenwick’s face.

“Exactly. Poor science!”

Mrs. Allis returned, and I bade my host and hostess good night. This time I did not go back again.

[13] Copyright, 1922, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright, 1923, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould.

WINKELBURG[14]

By BEN HECHT

(From _The Smart Set_)

I

There was never a man as irritating as Winkelburg. He was an encyclopedia of misfortunes. Everything that can happen to a man had happened to him. He had lost his family, his money and his health. He was, in short, a man completely broken--tall, thin, with a cadaverous face out of which shone two huge lustreless eyes. He walked with an angular crawl that reminded one of the emaciated flies one sees at the beginning of winter. That was Winkelburg to a dot--a creature perversely alive, dragging itself across an illimitable expanse of flypaper.

It was one of Winkelburg’s worst habits to appear at unexpected moments. But, perhaps, any appearances he might have made would have had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward to him, and thus the sight of his wan, uncomfortable smile, his lustreless eyes, his tenacious crawl was invariably an irritating surprise.