Lady Afraid (15 page)

Then she hardly heard or saw him for a time—not, in fact, until he reappeared silently beside her, saying, “One man in the room. An old man. Waiting in a chair, acting as if he was watching his own soul burn. Want to have a peek at him?”

“Ivan—that would be Ivan,” Sarah whispered. “He sits that way when he is upset. And he may be watching his soul—it left his body long ago, that’s sure.”

In shadows and through silence, they went to the window, to a point where they could see clearly the interior of the room. Illumination came from a swing-arm lamp turned to its lowest wattage.

Spread loosely in a yellow barrel chair beside the lamp sat Ivan, an old man, thick of body, thick of neck, with bowed head. Ivan was contemplating nothing with the intensity of a polar bear beside a hole in the ice pack. His close-cropped, close-lying white hair, a woolly light-colored camel’s-hair robe, enhanced his predatory coldness.

“Ivan Lineyack?” Most’s question was a wisp beside Sarah’s ear.

Dislike, caustic and corrosive, drew Sarah straight and tight in the darkness, and she whispered, “Yes…. The grandfather of my son.”

“Seems to be alone. The chances are that he might answer the door himself.” Most then touched her arm, adding, “We might as well go in now as any time.”

Sarah asked quietly, “Will you wait outside?”

“Outside?… Me?” His head bent; he tried to read her face in the darkness. “Is there a reason for that? One I would like?”

Sarah said, “I think, the way he is now, he would vent screaming rage on a man. I know him. I can guess his state of mind. You or any man would only be a target for his loudness.”

“Two could play at that. I’ve got a few loud things to say myself.”

“No. Please. Let me go in alone.”

“Okay. I’ll be outside. I’ll be right here.” Most swung and examined the driveway, the lawn, shrubbery, the flagged walks. “If a police car comes, I’ll flip something—a penny or some other coin—against the window.”

Sarah held out her hand. “Wish me courage.”

“No.” Most shook his head. “You’re not really afraid of him, I can see that. So why wish you courage? Luck is something you can use. I wish you good luck.”

Walking to the door, she knew that here was a fairly imperturbable man, and she laid her knuckles firmly against the door. In a while the door was opened by Ivan Lineyack.

“Good evening, Father Lineyack,” Sarah said deliberately.

“You!… Sarah!” Lineyack’s heavy right hand came up, hung poised; the thick fingers were distended, the palm toward Sarah. “You—you came here?”

“May I come in?” Sarah said.

The old man’s face was lined, unsmiling. But he drew the door more open and, without taking his eyes off Sarah, said, “You may come in. You are not welcome.”

Sarah stepped inside, past wide, unwavering, surprised slate eyes, and Ivan closed the door.

There was a hall, which Sarah crossed; she turned deliberately to the right into the room where Ivan had been seated. Most would be watching this room from the outdoors. The room was not large and had taupe carpeting, books to the ceiling on all walls.

Lineyack followed her heavily, lifting his feet and putting them down. Perhaps amazement was in him. If so, it was there inscrutably.

“You have not changed,” Sarah said, and she calmly added, “I had wondered.” She studied Ivan’s square adamant face, a face that carried its heaviness without fat and without extra chins. Two years had dug a few grooves in the face, but it still had shocking austerity. It was Paul who had once phrased the best description of Ivan’s face that Sarah could imagine. Paul had said: “Ivan has a face like the front of the First National Bank in the year 1912.” Sarah considered this wonderful—it seemed to cover everything, the hard pride, the egoism, the deliberate carrying of power as if it was a loaded gun or a pouch of bounty, as Lineyack willed.

“Yes, you seem much the same,” Sarah repeated.

Ivan’s head inclined a fractional inch. “You look well, Sarah.”

She crossed and deliberately took the chair where he had been sitting. She had remembered how he detested having his personal articles used by others. She intended to strike repeatedly at his composure. He was, as she recalled him, a man who could best be dealt with if driven beyond a point. When he was as he was now—soft-voiced, chivalrous with physical action, mentally without either courtesy or mercy—he was a coldly invulnerable man. But outrage him, snap at him, and there was a boiling point which he would reach, and after that, although you might not handle him, at least all masks were off.

Sarah asked coldly, “Are we alone? Will we be overheard?”

He closed the door through which they had entered, then went to another door and closed that, not ceasing to watch her the while.

“I think we can talk,” he said.

“You may begin by telling me why you had Jonnie taken from me,” Sarah said.

Ivan Lineyack stood on wide-planted feet, hands pocketed, face composed. “That was two years ago, Sarah. At that time I gave my reasons through my lawyers. I can do so again, if necessary. But I doubt if it will be needed, and I do not intend to have an argument with you.”

This was like him, a Godlike sureness that his way was the only way there would be. For nearly two years she had not seen Ivan; two years had done nothing to change his arrogant ways.

“I mean tonight,” Sarah said.

Ivan frowned. “Tonight—”

“Tonight you had Jonnie taken from me. Why?”

He seemed puzzled, and he stared at Sarah and then he began fingering at the lapels of his robe. His eyebrows, made of hard, short gray hair, became straight lines. “Sarah, what are you trying to say?” he asked sharply.

“Jonnie was taken from me tonight.”

Lineyack’s head shook oddly. “Taken… I do not believe you!”

“I didn’t suppose you would,” Sarah told him. “Have you a man working for you named Ides or Cokerham? He would be the paid skipper on your cabin cruiser.”

“Dewey? Dewey Cokerham, you mean?”

“That is the one.”

“What about Dewey?”

Dewey—Ivan always referred to those he regarded as his lessers by first names; it was unlikely anything would jolt him into doing otherwise. For instance, his butler was Willard, and the cook Min; the employees in his business were likewise graded; only the vice-president was Mr. Clark. The treasurer was Doan, the general manager Alfred, and everyone on down was a first name…. Never, Sarah thought, has he called me anything but Sarah.

Sarah said, “After my son was taken from me tonight, I went to a friend for help. This man Cokerham appeared. Apparently he had followed me, was not exactly sure where I had gone and was trying to find out.”

“Followed you? Dewey?” The old man seemed deeply jarred.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

Sarah said bitterly, “Perhaps because he helped take Jonnie from me, and he wanted to find out what I was doing about it.” Now she had planned to add, for calculated effect:
It occurred to me that you had hired them
, but she did not. Because Lineyack was struck. His eyes were becoming unhard; his face setting itself in flat planes, taking on pallor.
He did not know Jonnie was taken from me
, Sarah thought. And she listened to the old man, making a clear effort to retain composure, ask, “Sarah, is this true?”

“You did not know!”

“My God!” A vein grew a purple leafless tree on his forehead. “Tonight—the boy taken from you! No! No, you must be mad!”

Then—and Sarah nearly screamed, it startled her so—Alice Mildred Lineyack came into the tiny reading room. The coming of Paul’s mother had a ghostliness; a door swung ajar without noticeable sound and disclosed Alice Mildred, a thin buggy whip of a woman with a face that was wan, astral, seraphic, inward.
How pitifully she has changed
, Sarah thought, and she was hit by a sharp pity. The stark physical evidences of Alice Mildred’s failure of health were shocking. Normally Alice Mildred’s complexion had been excellent, clear and unblemished, the skin that angels have in paintings. Now she had a bluish pallor, drawn skin; the pliancy was gone from her body. Back of the rich delicate lace bodice of her nightgown there was grim evidence of gaunt ribs and vanished breasts.

In a thin, lonely voice that gave the impression of having nothing solid in it anywhere, Alice Mildred said, “You speak of strange things, Sarah. They are very strange.”

“You—listening!” Ivan gasped. “You were eavesdropping at the door! How long?”

Sarah noticed how Ivan was glaring at his wife. His hands were clenched, and his arms, unless Sarah was mistaken, were suddenly trembling.

Alice Mildred’s face turned to Ivan with a completely inward composure that told nothing at all. The inwardness, at least, had not changed about her. “Is there something that should be concealed from me, Ivan?”

“Damn you, you were eavesdropping!” Lineyack said harshly.

Alice Mildred came slowly into the room. “Why? Why, Ivan? Are there dark things behind doors?”

Lineyack changed his tone and moved toward his wife. “You disobeyed me. You’re not well, and you promised to sleep. Dr. Danneberg left you something to help you sleep.”

Lineyack laid a thick hand on his wife’s arm. “You must have rest. I’ll take you back to your room.”

Alice Mildred began trying to disengage her arm from Ivan’s grip and could not, and Sarah had the horrifying impression of a trapped bird struggling. “I want to know about our son!” Alice Mildred cried.

Lineyack lied to her. “The boy is all right, Alice Mildred. Sarah merely came to discuss returning him.”

His wife shook her head. “No… I overheard, Ivan. I know better…. Something strange and terrible is happening tonight.”

Lineyack glanced at Sarah and she got the feeling that there was a sickness back of his eyes. “Tell her the boy is safe in your possession,” he ordered coldly.

“Sarah!” gasped Alice Mildred. “Sarah, do not deceive me! It’s not true—that Jonnie is safe—is it?”

“No,” Sarah said.

“Did you take the child tonight, Sarah?” Alice Mildred asked with tremulous intensity.

A shocked unease beset Sarah and it clogged her voice as she admitted, “Yes, I took Jonnie.”

“Was it your idea, Sarah?”

Ivan Lineyack shot up a hand in alarm; his eyebrows-beetling—demanded silence of Sarah.

Defying him, “No, it was not my idea,” Sarah said steadily. “It was the idea of a man named Brill, and it was part of some kind of a plot…. But I took Jonnie. I left notes saying so.”

“Yes. The notes… It was I who found your notes, Sarah,” Alice Mildred said slowly. “I had entered our son’s bedroom, and he was gone, and your note was there.” The old lady came nearer to Sarah. The expression on Alice Mildred’s wan face was heart-wrenching.

Alice Mildred murmured gently, “I go to our son’s room often. Oh, often in each night. You see, Sarah, I like to sit there and watch his tiny face while it is warm and glowing with sleep. He is a very warm little fellow when he sleeps, Sarah, and I sit there and think how wonderfully God has wrought from me and of a part of me.”

Sarah gasped, “Please stop! Stop it, Alice Mildred!”

Lineyack firmed his grip on his wife’s arm. “You must go back to bed. You understand, Alice Mildred!” he said. “You are very ill.”

There was no sureness in Alice Mildred and no real will to resist, and she murmured, “Very well, Ivan. But you must bring my son to me. You understand that, don’t you?”

Standing with hands pressed tightly to her cheeks, listening to Lineyack taking his wife upstairs, Sarah knew there would be few more remorseful moments in her life than the one she was having now.

Alice Mildred was, in body and mind, an ill woman. Sarah could see that clearly. Mr. Arbogast had said that Alice Mildred should never have been told of the disappearance of the boy. But it was worse than that; Alice Mildred had been the one to find Jonnie gone. The shock, Sarah could see, had produced a grave effect.
Alice Mildred’s mind
, she thought in horror,
may be unable to withstand this.

Sarah sank into the chair beside the light. Her feeling toward Alice Mildred had always been one of pity; Alice Mildred was so helplessly inward; it had always been shocking to see her so trapped by Ivan’s case-hardened personality.

She glanced at the window. Was Captain Most watching outside? He had said he would be.

And then, alarm upflying in her, Sarah realized that Ivan Lineyack might even now be telephoning the police. She came stiffly from the chair, went to the door, to the foot of the stairway. She listened…. How long had she been waiting? Three minutes? Five? Long enough for Ivan to have used the telephone?

But presently Ivan Lineyack’s great beefy body was on the stairs, descending. When he saw Sarah poised at the foot of the steps, the heaviness on his face seemed to gather weight.

He said nothing, and Sarah retreated before him, back into the tiny reading room. Lineyack followed. His arms were slack at his sides, his eyes low-lidded over dour emotions. “You can see that she is ill,” he said.

“I am very sorry for her,” Sarah said quietly.

“Her mind has broken. She believes the boy to be her own son.”

Shock gesture, hand cramped to cheek, gave Sarah an attitude of frozen stiffness.

“Of course,” added Lineyack, shrugging, “the hallucination is not continuous. Just at her worse times.”

“How awful!”

Lineyack’s slate eyes unlidded a gaze that was bitter, without warmth or kindness. “Dr. Danneberg is a skillful man. His record in psychiatry is excellent. He has assured me that there is near certainty that pronounced shock at this time—and I have in mind specifically the taking of the boy from us—will send Alice Mildred off the deep end of no returning.” He compressed his lips; they flew apart to emit, “You may take that thought with you, you boat tramp!”

Sarah took this dully.

Lineyack cleared his throat with a harsh clatter. “Incidentally, I do not believe this tale you tell of not having the child now.”

He was, Sarah realized, back in command of the situation and hard-planted on his arrogant feet again. There for a time, earlier, he had been upset, so askew that Sarah did not understand it. But now the grim old man, his steam renewed, was in form.