“Nothing.”
“Did she have any money with her?”
“Where would she get any money?”
“From you.”
“I didn’t give her any money.”
“Thank God for that. It means she can’t be very far away.”
“I told you I don’t think she intended to go far. She just wanted to throw a scare into us. And,” Lora added with a bleak little smile, “she did.”
“I’m not exactly scared.”
“You exactly are. Don’t kid me. You won’t look any better in stripes than I will.”
“It’s all your fault, not mine.”
“My fault. Listen, mister, don’t make me lose my temper. Stick to the facts. I just came into the middle of a very fancy little game you’d rigged up by yourself.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t. It was her. She did it!”
“Well, don’t get hysterical. And for Pete’s sake watch the road, do you want to get us killed?”
“I don’t care. It may be the only way out.”
“Well, it’s not the only way out for me!” Lora screamed. “I’ve got a future.”
“Have you?”
“What do you mean, have I?”
“You didn’t think so much of your future when you were buying that ether.”
“I had a fit of depression, that’s all. I couldn’t see my way clear.”
“Now you can?”
“With your help, I can. I need your help and you need mine. We’re a sort of mutual aid society.”
Willett took his eyes off the road for a second and stared at her. “How much are you going to try and swindle out of me?”
“I want the money you promised my mother plus a little extra for myself.”
“I never promised your mother any lump sum. I couldn’t afford to then and I can’t now. That three thousand dollars was the last cash I have in the world. I’m at the end of my rope.”
“You’ve got the kind of rope that stretches.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said carefully, “your stock in the doll factory.”
“That must never be touched. I’ll go to prison, I’ll kill myself, before I disregard my mother’s wishes.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re sacred to me.”
“Oh nuts.”
Willett’s jaw clenched. “They are. You wouldn’t understand about human feelings.”
“Forget about feelings and let’s get back to factories. Ethel says you’re not even interested in the doll factory, and what’s more she says it’s losing money and the place is falling apart.”
“Ethel knows nothing about business. The factory is not losing money and it’s not falling apart. It simply needs recapitalization and a firm hand.”
“Yours?”
“I’m certainly going to try. I’ve had very little chance to take care of the business this past year because I’ve been traveling around with Mother.”
“Maybe that was her idea.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Skip it.”
They were passing through the oldest section of town where front parlors had become little grocery stores or antique shops, and bright new gas stations rubbed shoulders with shabby-looking mansions that had been converted into boarding houses or two-room apartments.
Traffic was heavy and sluggish, slowed down by pedestrians ambling across the streets and children on bicycles and dogs of every size and shape and breed and mixture of breeds. These dogs were different from the dogs in the other parts of town — they had seen everything, and having seen everything, they were not so curious or so friendly. They moved in and out of traffic, skillfully, knowing which cars to step in front of and which to avoid, using their right of way with more insight and consideration than the pedestrians. Lora turned and looked out of the rear window. “Greer is still with us, six cars back.”
“What will we do?”
“I know this neighborhood. There’s a Texaco station in the next block. Drive in very slowly and I’ll duck out and hide in the restroom. Then you can lead Greer around for awhile while I walk over to the house. It’s only half a block from the gas station.”
“I can’t lead him around all night.”
“Give me half an hour.”
“You don’t even know for sure that she’s at the house.”
“Where else would she go if she was broke? She’ll be there, all right,” Lora said grimly. “She’d better be.”
“I can’t drive around all night,” he said again.
“You don’t have to. Just go home. That will give me a chance to talk to her. Then if things work out we’ll take a cab and meet you at home.”
“I hope—”
“Here’s the station. Turn in.”
He turned in, very slowly, passing within two yards of the ladies’ restroom. Lora jumped out of the car while it was moving.
She was quick, but not quick enough.
Both Frank and Greer spotted her in the three seconds that it took her to reach the door. But instead of stopping the car and waiting for her to come out Greer pressed on the accelerator.
“Aren’t you going to follow her?” Frank said.
“I don’t have to. I know where she’s going. So I think we’ll get there first and surprise her.”
Half a block down the street Greer turned into a long narrow driveway, drove to the end of it, and switched off his car lights.
Within five minutes Lora Dalloway went past the driveway and up the geranium-lined sidewalk of the house next door.
25
The house was old but in better repair than most of its neighbors. The wooden steps had been rebuilt and the paint on the four Doric pillars that supported the veranda had been touched up. A twenty-watt bulb lit up the framed sign on one of the pillars, Room and Board, Ladies Only.
Lora pressed the doorbell and then stepped back so that she could get a better view of the front room through the window. Under a blue-beaded chandelier three middle-aged women were playing bridge at a large, old-fashioned, round table. One of them, a plump brunette in a faded blue housedress, was talking and eating potato chips out of a cellophane bag.
Lora rang again and at the second ring the door was opened by a thin pallid-faced woman about forty.
She spoke in a hushed, sibilant whisper like a librarian. “Yes?”
“I was passing by and happened to see your sign.”
“My sign? Dear me, it isn’t my sign, I just board here.” The woman laughed deprecatingly, making it clear that while she might have to live in a boarding house she’d certainly never stoop to running one. “There’s no vacancy anyway, that I know.”
“Oh.”
“There was a room vacant for some time, but only this morning someone came and rented it, an elderly woman. I haven’t seen her myself. She doesn’t come down for meals and I hear she’s not going to. In fact, what I heard is that she’s a little — you know, in the head.” She touched the side of her own head lightly with one forefinger. “Poor soul.”
Lora murmured, “It happens in the best of families.”
“It does for a fact. Only it seems to me that a respectable boarding house isn’t quite the place for such people. I said to Blanche — that’s Mrs. Cushman, the landlady — I said, great Caesar, Blanche, haven’t you enough to do without taking on the burden of carrying trays up and down stairs? Poor Blanche, she just can’t resist trying to help people. Sometimes I think it’s a weakness rather than a strength.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Well, I must go back to the game, I’m dummy this hand. Sorry there’s no vacancy, it would be nice to have a few younger people around. Maybe you’ll try again?”