“And Maude came back to Los Angeles with her husband?”
“Yes. She wired me yesterday from here. I caught the first possible plane.”
“Let me see the telegram.”
“I don’t have it. It was read to me on the telephone.” He added waspishly: “She might have used a less public means of communicating her disgrace.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was very happy. Turning the knife in the wound, of course.” His face darkened, and through his eyes I caught a glimpse of the red fires banked inside him. “She warned me not to try and follow her, and apologized for taking the money.”
“What money?”
“She wrote a check last Friday before she left, which nearly exhausted our joint checking account. A check for a thousand dollars.”
“But it belonged to her?”
“In the legal sense, not morally. It’s always been understood that I disburse the money.” A doleful whine entered his voice. “The man is clearly after our money, and the deuce of it is, there’s nothing to prevent Maude from drawing on our capital. She might even sell the School!”
“She owns it?”
“I’m afraid she does, legally. Father left her the School. I – my administrative ability was a little slow in developing – a gradual growth, you know. Poor Father didn’t live to see me mature.” He coughed, choking on his own unction. “The buildings alone are worth nearly two hundred thousand. The added value of our prestige is incalculable.”
He paused in a listening attitude, as though he could hear the unholy gurgle of money going down the drain. I put on my coat.
“You want them traced, is that it? To see that the marriage is regular, and make sure that he isn’t a confidence man?”
“I want to see my sister. If I could just talk to her – well, something might be saved. She may have lost her mind. I can’t permit her to wreck her life, and mine, as Mother wrecked Father’s and her own.”
“Where does your mother live in Los Angeles?”
“She has a house in a place called Westwood, I believe. I’ve never been there.”
“I think we ought to visit her. You haven’t been in touch with her?”
“Certainly not. And I have no wish to see her now.”
“I think you should. If Maude was out here with her at Easter, your mother may know the man. It doesn’t sound as though your sister eloped on the spur of the moment.”
“You may be right,” he said slowly. “It hadn’t occurred to me that she may have met him out here. And then he followed her to Chicago, eh? Of course. It’s the logical hypothesis.”
We had a short talk about money. Harlan endorsed a fifty-dollar traveler’s check to me, and we went downstairs to my car.
It wasn’t far to Westwood, as distances go in Los Angeles. We joined the early evening traffic rushing like lemmings towards the sea and the suburbs. Shielding his eyes with his hand against the sun’s horizontal rays, Harlan told me a little about his mother. Enough for me to know what to expect.
She lived in a frame cottage on a hillside overlooking the distant campus. The front yard was choked with a dozen varieties of cactus, some of which speared as high as the roof. The house needed paint and it hung on the slope a little off balance, like its tenant.
She opened the screen door, blinking against the sun. Her face was gouged and eroded by years and trouble. Black hair, shot with gray, hung in straight limp bangs over her forehead. Large tarnished metal rings depended from her earlobes. Several gold chains hung around her withered neck, and tinkled when she moved. She was dressed in sandals and a brown homespun robe which looked like sacking, cinched in by a rope at the waist.
Her eyes were dusty black and very remote. She didn’t seem to know Harlan. He said in a new voice, a husky questioning whisper:
“Mother?”
She peered at him, and her face organized itself in wrinkles around her brightening eyes. She smiled. Her teeth were tobacco-colored, but her smile was generous. It turned to laughter. Red-stained by the sun, she looked like an old gypsy on a vino jag.
“My God in heaven! You’re Reginald.”
“Yes.” He took off his hat. “I fail to see what you’re laughing about, however.”
“It’s just,” she gasped, “you look so much like your father.”
“Is that so comical? I hope I do. I patterned my life on Father’s, tried to live up to his code. I only wish I could say as much for Maude.”
Her laughter died. “You’ve no right to criticize Maude. She’s worth two of you, and you know it. Maude’s a fine woman.”
“A fine fool!” he said hotly. “Throwing herself away, embezzling money–”
“Watch your language. Maude is my daughter.” The old woman had a certain dignity.
“She’s very much your daughter, apparently. Is she here with you?”
“No, she’s not. I know why you’ve come, of course. I warned Maude you’d try and drag her back to the salt mines.”
“Then you’ve seen her. Where is she?”
“I have no intention of telling you. Maude is well and happy – happy for the first time in her life.”
“You’re going to tell me,” he said between clenched teeth.
He grabbed her pipestem wrist. She batted her eyes in fearful defiance, her seamed lips shrinking back from her long teeth. I took him by the shoulder and the arm and jerked him back to his heels, breaking his grip.
“Take it easy, Harlan. You can’t force information out of people.”
He gave me a look of dull hatred, then transferred it to his mother. She returned it.
“The same old Reginald,” she said, “who used to love pinning beetles to a board. Who is this gentleman, by the way?”
“Mr. Archer.” He added heavily: “A private detective.”
She flung up her hands and grimaced. “Ah, Reggie. You’re outdoing yourself. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Neither have you, Mother. But you and I are not the point at issue. Please don’t try to divert me. I want to know where Maude and her – her consort are.”
“You won’t find out from me. Aren’t you satisfied with thirty years of Maude’s life? Do you have to have it all?”
“I know what’s best for Maude. I doubt that you do, after the frightful hash you’ve made of your own life.” He looked with contempt at the peeling walls, the patched screen door, the discarded old woman who had taken refuge behind it. “If you’re responsible for this brainstorm of hers–”
He ran out of words. Fury had strung him as taut as a wire. I could practically hear him hum. And I kept my shoulder between him and the door.
“It’s no brainstorm,” she said. “Maude found a man who suited her at last, and she had the good sense to forsake everything for him. Just as I did.” Memory smoothed her face; a surge of romantic feeling sang like a warped record through her voice: “I’m proud of my part in this.”
“You admit it, then?”
“Why shouldn’t I? I brought her and Leonard Lister together last spring, when she was here with me. Leonard’s a splendid man, and they took to each other at once. Maude needed a powerful male personality to break through to her, after all those spinster years–”
“What did you say his name was?”
“Leonard Lister,” I said.
The old woman’s hand had gone to her mouth. She said between yellow fingers: “I didn’t mean to tell you. Now that you’ve got it out of me – you must have heard of Leonard. He’s a brilliant creative artist in the theatre.”
“Have you ever heard of him, Archer?”
“No.”
“Leonard Lister?” the old woman said. “Surely you know his name, if you live in Los Angeles. He’s a well-known director in the experimental theatre. He’s even taught at the University. Leonard has wonderful plans for making poetic films, like Cocteau’s in France.”