insist that he is a ghost, in spite of his substantial appearance.”
“Definitely a ghost!” Jenkins grunted weightily. “We buried him, didn’t we? And unburied him again a week later to see if he was still there; and he was, dead and cold as stone. Oh, yes, definitely a ghost. What other explanation could there be?”
“I’m not,” said Kent carefully, “not exactly – a believer – in ghosts.”
The fat man waved the objection aside with a flabby hand. “None of us were, sir, none of us. But facts are facts.”
Kent sat silent; then: “A ghost that tells the future. What kind of future? Is it all as vague as that statement of his to Mrs Carmody about her sister coming out of the courthouse?”
Sagging flesh shook as Mr Jenkins cleared his throat. “Mostly local events of little importance, but which would interest an old man who lived here all his life.”
“Has he said anything about the war?”
“He talks as if it’s over, and therefore acts as if the least said the better.” Mr Jenkins laughed a great husky, tolerant laugh. “His point about the war is amazement that prices continue to hold up. It confuses him. And it’s no use keeping after him, because talking tires him easily, and he gets a persecuted look. He did say something about American armies landing in northern France, but” – he shrugged – “we all know that’s going to happen, anyway.”
Kent nodded. “This Mrs. Carmody – she arrived when?”
“In 1933, nearly nine years ago.”
“And Mr Wainwright has been dead five years?”
The fat man settled himself deeper into his chair. “I shall be glad,” he said pompously, “to tell you the rest of the story in an orderly fashion. I shall omit the first few months after her arrival, as they contained very little of importance—”
The woman came exultantly out of the Wholesale Marketing Co. She felt a renewal of the glow that had suffused her when she first discovered this firm in Kempster two months before.
Four chickens and three dozen eggs – four dollars cash.
Cash!
The glow inside her dimmed. She frowned darkly. It was no use fooling herself; now that the harvesting season was only a week away, this makeshift method of obtaining money out of the farm couldn’t go on— Her mind flashed to the bank book she had discovered in the house, with its tremendous information that the Wainwrights had eleven thousand seven hundred thirty-four dollars and fifty-one cents in the Kempster Bank.
An incredible fortune, so close yet so far away—
She stood very still in front of the bank finally, briefly paralyzed by a thought dark as night. If she went in – in minutes she’d know the worst.
This time it wouldn’t be an old, old man and a young girl she’d be facing. It would be—
The banker was a dapper little fellow with horn-rimmed glasses, behind which sparkled a large pair of gray eyes.
“Ah, yes, Mrs Carmody!” The man rubbed his fingers together. “So it finally occurred to you to come and see me.”
He chuckled. “Well, well, we can fix everything; don’t worry. I think between us we can manage to look after the Wainwright farm to the satisfaction of the community and the court, eh?
Court! The word caught the woman in the middle of a long, ascending surge of triumph. So this was it. This was what the old man had prophesied. And it was good, not bad.
She felt a brief, ferocious rage at the old fool for having frightened her so badly – but the banker was speaking again:
“I understand you have a letter from your sister-in-law, asking you to look after Phyllis and the farm. It is possible such letter is not absolutely necessary, as you are the only relative, but in lieu of a will it will constitute a definite authorization on the basis of which the courts can appoint you executrix.”
The woman sat very still, almost frozen by the words. Somehow, while she had always felt that she would in a crisis produce the letter she had forged, now that the terrible moment was there—
She felt herself fumbling in her purse, and there was the sound of her voice mumbling some doubt about the letter still being around. But she knew better.
She brought it out, took it blindly from the blank envelope where she had carefully placed it, handed it toward the smooth, reaching fingers – and waited her doom.
As he read, the man spoke half to himself, half to her: “Hm-m-m, she offers you twenty-five dollars a month over and above expenses—”
The woman quivered in every muscle of her thick body. The incredibly violent thought came that she must have been mad to put such a thing in the letter. She said hurriedly: “Forget about the money. I’m not here to —”
“I was just going to say,” interrupted the banker, “that it seems an inadequate wage. For a farm as large and wealthy as that of the Wainwrights’, there is no reason why the manager should not receive fifty dollars, at least, and that is the sum I shall petition the judge for.”
He added: “The local magistrate is having a summer sitting this morning just down the street, and if you’ll step over there with me we can have this all settled shortly.”
He finished: “By the way, he’s always interested in the latest predictions of old Mr Wainwright.”
“I know them all!” the woman gulped.
She allowed herself, a little later, to be shepherded onto the sidewalk. A brilliant, late July sun was pouring down on the pavement. Slowly, it warmed the chill out of her veins.
It was three years later, three undisturbed years. The woman stopped short in the task of running the carpet sweeper over the living-room carpet, and stood frowning. Just what had brought the thought into her mind, she couldn’t remember, but—
Had she seen the old man, as she came out of the courthouse that July day three years before, when the world had been handed to her without a struggle.
The old man had predicted that moment. That meant, in some way, he must have seen it. Had the picture come in the form of a vision? Or as a result of some contact in his mind across the months? Had he in short been physically present; and the scene had flashed back through some obscure connection across time?
She couldn’t remember having seen him. Try as she would, nothing came to her from that moment but a sort of blurred, enormous contentment.
The old man, of course, thought he’d been there. The old fool believed that everything he ever spoke about was memory of his past. What a dim, senile world that past must be.
It must spread before his mind like a road over which shifting tendrils of fog drifted, now thick and impenetrable, now thin and bright with flashing rays of sunlight – and pictures.
Pictures of events.
Across the room from her she was vaguely aware of the old man stirring in his chair. He spoke:
“Seems like hardly yesterday that Phyllis and that Couzens boy got married. And yet it’s—”
He paused; he said politely: “When was that, Pearl? My memory isn’t as good as it was, and—”
The words didn’t actually penetrate the woman. But her gaze, in its idle turning, fastened on plump Pearl – and stopped. The girl sat rigid on the living-room couch, where she had been sprawling. Her round, baby eyes were wide.
“Ma!” she shrilled. “Did you hear that? Grandpa’s talking like Phyllis and Charlie Couzens are married.”
There was a thick, muffled sound of somebody half choking. With a gulp the woman realized that it was she who had made the sound. Gasping, she whirled on the old man and loomed over him, a big, tight-lipped creature, with hard blue eyes.
For a moment, her dismay was so all-consuming that words wouldn’t come. The immensity of the catastrophe implied by the old man’s statement scarcely left room for thought. But—
Marriage!
And she had actually thought smugly that Bill and Phyllis – Why, Bill had told her and—
