“‘I’ve been driving,’ I told him. ‘Jack, I left the party hours ago. I’ve been out driving by myself. Let me up, Jack. Jack, let me up.’ I think I embarrassed him; I think I hurt his feelings.
“I put the car in the garage, left the key in the ignition and opened the windows. Maybe I heard it in my room, maybe it was only the whining in my head.
“I can’t sleep without it. It has to be on. I use up batteries.”
Then Ingrid said something which Dick couldn’t quite make out. “I think we have a bad connection,” he said.
“I said it’s not an animal in a trap, not a baby crying.”
“Have it disconnected. You don’t need it.”
“I need it. It’s what—” The last word was lost.
“What was that?”
“I said it’s what mourns. I need it. It’s what says that everything isn’t okay. It’s my gadget for grief.”
“Get rid of it,” Dick said.
“Who would keen, who would cry?”
“Look, this connection is very bad. I can hardly hear you. There’s some sort of interference.”
“That—”
“What did you say?”
“That’s it. What you hear. I had a phone put in my car. I’m in a lover’s lane I know. The doors are locked and the engine’s off and the key’s in the ignition. Listen.”
She must have put the phone up to the noise, because suddenly it became louder. Or perhaps she had opened the door and was swinging it back and forth on its hinge, for the sound would rise to a howl and then suddenly grow softer.
Dick Gibson listened to the queer yowl of the device, then heard the woman’s voice again. She seemed to be crooning a sort of encouragement to it. He strained to make out the words.
“You tell ’em,” she was saying. “Tell him when he comes in. You tell him, sweetie, I st-st-stutter.”
“Hello.”
“Hello, Henry.” It was Henry Harper.
“What? Who? Oh, yeah.”
“Isn’t this Henry Harper?”
“You don’t think I’d be fool enough to give my right name, do you? Yes, I’m the boy you know as Henry Harper.”
“Henry Harper isn’t your name?”
“No it isn’t, and it’s a darn good thing I never told you what it really is. I had a lucky hunch when I called that first time and decided I’d better not be entirely open with you.”
“Well, I don’t know how to respond to something like that, Henry. You put me at a terrible disadvantage. You’re free to misrepresent yourself as much as you please, and there’s nothing I can do about it except cut you off the air. I don’t like to do that to any caller, Henry. … You see? I called you Henry. I must sound pretty foolish if that isn’t who you are.” Dick was genuinely upset. “I suppose all the rest of it, your being rich and nine years old and all alone in an enormous mansion, that’s all misrepresentation too.”
“Of course not. It’s an evidence of their truth that I couldn’t give my name out over the air.”
“I see,” Dick said coolly.
“I’m afraid you don’t at all. Do you know something? There are a whale of a lot of nosy parkers who listen to this program. If you look me up in the supplement to the Directory you’ll see I gave a P.O. box number instead of an address. That was another precaution, of course.”
“A precaution against what?”
“Why, against interference with my way of life. Look, I’m an immensely wealthy orphan. There’s the estate itself and three-quarters of a million dollars cold cash in my piggy banks, and I stand to come into a good deal more than that when I achieve my majority. Don’t you know these things represent enormous temptations to wicked and unscrupulous persons? My age makes me extremely vulnerable to vultures, and my status in the eyes of the authorities trebles that vulnerability.”
“Has anyone actually tried to take advantage of you?”
“Oh, Dick, please — don’t be such a naif. You should see some of the letters in that P.O. box. When I drove to Jacksonville to pick up the first batch—”
“Drove to Jacksonville? You said you lived in Jacksonville.”
“I maintain a post office box there, yes, but just as I was reluctant to give my right name, so was I loath to declare my true place of residence. How many estates of the kind I described do you suppose there are in a city the size of Jacksonville? As I’ve been at one time or other a guest in them all, I know only too well how easy I would be to trace. Look, everything I told you before is substantively true. I wasn’t trying to deceive you personally, and I didn’t intend my natural precautions to be taken as a slander on the Mail Baggers themselves. The people in the Listening Posts are good people, but there are others — voyeurs — who listen to this program who have never bothered to list themselves in the Directory. It’s these people who aren’t my friends.”
“You lied once, and you lied twice. You could be lying a third time.”
“The Harpers are not liars, Mr. Gibson.”
“Hah.”
“Nor are we sitting ducks. I’ve explained why it’s necessary to misrepresent myself, why it’s necessary for me to hire a car to take me to Jacksonville to pick up my mail. If you read that mail you’d understand. I have money. People want to trick me. They make the most blatant overtures. There are people who will do anything for money, Mr. Gibson, and while I don’t care for the money itself, I have no intention of turning over my fortune to gold diggers and picklepusses. Not so long as that fortune can be used to relieve the miseries of my friends — and I consider all the legitimately unfortunate my friends. There are operations, medicines, birthday presents for children whose parents can’t afford them. There are vacations, holidays, financing alcoholics and addicts at sanitoria. There are so many good purposes to which my money can be put.”
“You’re a good boy, Henry. I’ve already told you,” Dick said bitterly. He felt that perhaps he was being unfair. The kid’s reasons — if he was a kid — were excellent, but a program like this was peculiarly susceptible to masquerades. His phones must not be used for disguises.
“Why are you doing this?” Henry pleaded. “I’m a child, an orphan. Do you think I’m Tom Sawyer? That I find being alone romantic, or that the enormous estate I live on is some dreamy little treehouse place where I can escape from the realities of the adult world? I’m a child. A child needs guidance, security, love. It’s his instinct to have these things. Do you suppose I’m the only little boy ever to overthrow his own instincts? I sleep with a light on, Mr. Gibson! When I sleep. Why do you suppose me so unnatural as to wish myself naked in the world? Is a little boy naturally a loner? Absurd! No. I place myself in this awful jeopardy because in addition to a child’s instinctive need for guidance and security and love, he has an even more powerful instinct for virtue. It’s like a tropism with us. We’re innocents, sir, every mother’s son of us, innocents who would legislate a just world where no one is deprived or disadvantaged, where virtue is rewarded and evil punished, and all needs annulled. I place myself in jeopardy not by choice, not by dint of rebellion, but because only by operating outside the law am I able to operate at all. Only in this way am I able to do my part, pull my own small boy’s weight in the world and do something with my little shaver’s instinctive sympathies. How long do you think I would be permitted to contribute to my favorite charities or allay with money — yes! I admit it; money, alas, is all that ultimately makes the difference — the sufferings of my fellows? How long would I be able to accomplish these things if I were to turn myself over to an executor or allow myself to be legally adopted? The best-willed bankers and trustees in the world would turn down my requests for funds to make my little gifts. And I’d respect them for it. I wouldn’t blame them one iota, for anything less would be a betrayal of their instincts and duties! The most loving, abnegative adoptive parents would do the same. That’s why I didn’t give my name.”