“Nice of you to allow me a Friday. I thought you were being awfully stingy with ’em for a while.”
“Suppose I had let you in on what we were doing. You’d have run around to Buffingham’s room, asking, ‘Now, just tell me everything you’ve done that’s suspicious.’”
“Don’t forget I found out about that ticket.”
“We’ll celebrate that today. In fact I’m thinking of spending the whole day celebrating. I have to stop in here to see a guy first, though. Want to come along?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “I haven’t been many places lately.”
The house was white with a wide porch. Hodge punched the bell.
A mild, white-whiskered old man answered the door.
“You’re the young man for eleven o’clock?” he asked. “Come right in.”
We went into a horsehair and mahogany parlor; I didn’t think any had survived.
The white-whiskered man looked at me doubtfully, but didn’t ask me to sit down.
“You have the license?” he asked.
“Right here,” Hodge answered and handed him a paper from his pocket. A clean one, folded.
“Has—ah—the young lady been in an accident?” asked the old man.
“Oh no, not at all,” Hodge said. “I take ’em by capture. She put up a fight. The methods of my forefathers are good enough for me.”
You have to remember I was on my way home from a hospital, and I’d been in bed steadily until two days ago.
“What do you mean, capture?” I asked dizzily.
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Hodge asked me airily. “You’re marrying me today.”
The old man laughed politely.
“Young people are so lighthearted nowadays,” he said.
He scuttled away and came back with two women.
He married us then, with his wife and his maidservant for witnesses.
“I’m doing this as a life-saving measure,” Hodge explained kindly, back in the car. “It isn’t safe to leave you alone at night. You have too many accidents. And I always did wonder if it was fun to be a philandering husband, too.”
“I wonder what Lieutenant Strom will say,” I said, which was a silly thing to bring up.
“Strom? Oh, he’s already said it. This last time you cracked up, I told him we were engaged. Had been for two months. Sort of surprised him, but he’s a philosopher. Swore a little.”
I saw where I’d have a struggle to call my soul my own.
We drew up in front of 593 Trent Street with a flourish. It was ringed with piles of sand, boxes of cement, funny iron kettles like big empty iron balls. Men, too. Leaning on shovels and things.
“I’ve rented us a furnished apartment to live in until you can hunt up what your domestic nature requires.” Hodge gave the orders. “I’ve got my stuff all packed, and most of your stuff. Movers coming at two o’clock. Now we’ll go in and quick pack up the rest of your stuff so we can grab a wedding luncheon before the movers get here.”
Halloran children scuttled out of the hall when we came in; Mrs. Halloran herself, movie magazine in hand, moved to the parlor door from her chair to smile a genteel but aloof welcome upon me.
My dishes were packed in barrels in the kitchen, my pots and pans, even my groceries. Funny how well Hodge had known what was mine and what Mrs. Garr’s—Mrs. Halloran’s now. The only thing left to pack were my clothes, bedding, linens.
I directed Hodge while he dragged my trunk and suitcases out of the closet; I was clumsy with one hand, he was clumsy at packing clothes with two. His hair came uncombed and his face red.
“See the pretty bridegroom,” I said.
“What nice bride would have her husband of—wait a minute—fifty minutes packing her panties? Answer that one, my bruised beauty.”
“Bruised by another man, too.”
“When I think how long I have to handle you carefully—oh well, I’ll regale you with tales of what’s going to happen. Lots worse said than done.”
He slammed my trunk shut, knelt to lock it.
“That all? Then I’ll run up and lock my trunks before we shoot downtown for that lunch. I’ve got a few things to throw in, too. Think you can stay here without busting a leg, or do you want to come along? Hell’s bells, I see where I take you along to the office, next.”
“Thank you,” I said with dignity. “I shall be perfectly safe here.”
He left me. I could hear the scurryings of the little Hallorans in the house, like heavy mice. I walked through my rooms for that inevitable last look. Studio couch where I’d slept, nearly been killed. Armchair where Strom had held court. Shelves where my dishes had stood. Cavernous icebox where so much ice had melted, and so fast. The twice-bolted cellar door behind which a murderer had lurked. The closet where my clothes had hung; into which, panting, Mrs. Garr had helped me lift the trunk Hodge had so easily lifted out.
It was the last time I would think, in her own house, of that evil woman, sitting below to watch the precious contents of that step. Sitting downstairs listening to me, too, because she had come into my rooms so quickly whenever I did anything unusual. That time I changed the furniture around. That time I took the trunk out for my summer clothes.
I stood there in the little passageway, stock-still.
Why had she listened so to me? Why, when it was that step she guarded? Why had she listened so closely to me? I was thinking hard, my heart racing, the blood pushing against the bruised half of my face.
She came up when I moved furniture. She came up when I moved the trunk. She had helped me carry the trunk into that closet.
The one thing she’d done when I moved in.
She had helped me carry it back there when I’d taken it out.
I stared into the closet. Bare walls, hooks, hanger rod.
Nothing.
Except the little platform for the trunk.
There was a noise in the hall. I nearly fainted.
I darted into the living room; the hall doors were shut
