“I should unhesitatingly introduce you as my wife,” Dow said promptly. “Estelle Otis will faint, and Tudbury’s Horse will exit en masse, bearing her limp body away.”
“There, see?” Cassie said to Leonidas. “I said that all he needed was a little push. This day has just done him a world of good. Leslie, I know that you and Dow can cope with anything. Just you think of Lieutenant Haseltine, and do what he’d do. Anyway, Tudbury’s Horse won’t be back. You needn’t give them a second thought. They’ll all be at that meeting of the Women Voters and Taxpayers League, down at the auditorium.”
“That place again?” Leslie said. “Don’t the women of Dalton do anything else but sit in an auditorium? Do they spend all their time there?”
“It’s one of those days,” Cassie said, “when the Tuesday Club lecture-luncheon just happens to fall on the same day as the monthly meeting of the League. It’s a tremendous meeting tonight, with door prizes and the Legion band. Fm supposed to be there, sitting on the platform in my black lace.”
Dow chuckled.
“So was mother, I think. She wouldn’t admit it on a bed of thorns, but she loathes that League— Cass, how come you ever got mixed up with that outfit?”
“I started it, dear,” Cassie said with a little sigh. “But that was a long time ago. Years and years ago, but it wasn’t the same thing at all, then. We were suffragettes.”
“Cassie,” Leonidas said, “were you a suffragette?”
Cassie beamed.
“Oh, my, yes! Didn’t you know? Why, I can’t tell you how many times I was arrested! Practically every day. Anyway, I started the League, way back there. But after we got the vote, it petered out, and it bored me, so I never went. Then about six years ago, it came to life again, being militant about taxes— Didn’t your mother have a hand in that, Dow?”
“You know mother,” Dow said. “She never let a chance to be militant about taxes get by her, if she saw it first. But now it’s different, isn’t it?”
“Completely,” Cassie said. “They went through a sort of intermediate state, after the tax fusses. You know, they passed a lot of resolutions condemning Hitler and Mussolini, and they sent a lot of encouraging telegrams to Haile Selassie and Schussnigg. But now— Cuff, will you look out the front door and see if there’s any sign of the car? But now, they’re all mixed up with local politics. Clean Government for Dalton, and who’s the best alderman from Ward Four—”
“Clambakes,” Cuff said as he crossed the kitchen. “That’s the Voters League, ain’t it? They give clambakes, and free milk. There’s some talk they’re going to put up Scipione for mayor.”
“Who?” Cassie said.
“Mike Scipione. He’s a Ward Four man. Whoever they put up, they’ll elect him, after them clambakes and the free milk, and the free ice cream, and Beano, and all. Margie won a seventeen-jewel solid gold watch to the Beano one night.”
“It was the Beano angle that alienated mother,” Dow said. “Beano and Ward Four. Mother’s for free milk, but she didn’t like the,” he looked at Cuff’s derby, “the headgear and the cigar smoke. Well, if the League’s got Ward Four lined up, I guess our reform administration’s on the way out. Rutherford’ll be out, too— What did you say, Bill?”
“Should you say,” the pince-nez were twirling, Cassie noticed, “should you say, offhand, that the mayorship of Dalton—er—led to higher-things?”
Dow nodded.
“As a rule, it’s considered a step in the right direction. It’s worth a term in Congress, if anyone wants the job, and sometimes they get shoved into the lieutenant-governorship. I think a couple got to be governors— Bill, do you think there’s a hookup between Chard and this refrigerator lad?”
“Of course there is,” Cassie said. “There must be. I just can’t get over Swiss Chard’s knowing her way about Florence Street, and that section—of course, she was going to that garage to see Pig Eyes. And even if neither happens to be there now, we can find out where they went. Is that the car now, Cuff? I’ll go thank Anderson—”
She bustled out of the kitchen.
Dow turned to Leonidas.
“Bill, what do you really think? About Chard, I mean?”
“What I think,” Leonidas said, “would amaze you. It is amazing me. Dow, people may come here whom you cannot keep out—”
“You mean, Rutherford, perhaps?”
“Possibly. But I depend on you to keep people away from downstairs. I don’t think for one moment that we’re ever going to fool the colonel, but everyone else must be made to feel that we have never been in that garage, and that we will never enter it till Jock comes.”
“We’ll brazen it out,” Dow said. “I’ll promise you that anyone who enters that garage will have to step over my dead body. What’s the idea behind things, Bill? Do people want the body found?”
“I think they did, at first. Now they realize we’re not going to bring the matter up, so they wish we would depart. For what purpose,” Leonidas added, “I do not know. Dow, did Miss Chard have any relatives?”
Dow looked surprised.
“Why, I suppose she must have, mustn’t she? I never thought of her having any family, any more than I thought of her having a first name. After all, Bill, she wasn’t the sort who led you into a corner and told you about her uncle who drank.”
“She has a brother,” Leslie said. “She mentioned him to me this morning. His name is George, and he’s a musician, and she’d have told me his life story if I’d given her a chance. She was all wound up about George.”
“Well,” Dow said, “that was your influence. I hadn’t seen vou more than half a second on the train this morning before I wanted to tell you about my life insurance, and how much I made, and if you’d share my pottage—”
“We’ve had enough,” Leslie said firmly, “of all that!”
“I like that firm touch,” Dow said.
