By the time Maggie came puffing across the lawn from Dr. Gerald Guiscarde’s motorcar, her plump face nearly as white as her uniform, a few more judiciously applied slaps of Rosaleen’s hard hands and a stiff belt of neat whiskey pressed on her by her father had brought Kathleen out of her hysterics to a stage of red-eyed, moist-cheeked snuffling interspersed with shudders, gaspings and swallowings and the occasional horrified stare at the man called Milo Moray.
But when Maggie entered, Kathleen sprang up and flung herself into the stout woman’s arms. “Oh, Mama, Mama, he killed him! He did! Right in front of me! I saw him do it.”
“Stuff and nonsense, Mrs. O’Shea,” snapped Rosaleen from where she stood in the archway between front and rear parlors. “The Jewboy ain’t dead … yetaways. But it’s I’m thinkin’ he should be. The little bugtit, he’s been sneakin’ out money from Mr. Moray’s room for weeks, he has, either him or Kathleen, more’s the pity. Mr. Moray bought him a lockbox and chained it to the bedstead, he did too, but somebody”—she stared hard at Kathleen as she paused, and the girl flushed and refused to return the stare—“has been tryin’ to pick the locks.
“Mr. Moray and Miss Thorsdottar got together to catch the thief, and fin’ly, today, he did. When he went into his room this afternoon, he found Kathleen and that Jewboy takin’ a hacksaw to the chain, set to carry the box away, I’d say, I would, so’s they could bash it opened. And when they come to see him, Kathleen comminceted a caterwaulin’, while the Jewboy went at poor Mr. Moray with a switchblade jackknife, he did.
“Poor Mr. Moray, he should ought to’ve kilt him, but he didn’, just busted his arm a wee bit and unjointed his shoulther and elbow, is all. He—”
“God Almighty damn, Milo" burst out Dr. Gerald Guiscarde from the foyer, which he just had entered after parking his SSKL 1931 Mercedes-Benz in the parking area off the driveway. “For the love of Christ, man, sit down! How deep did the stab go, do you know? Do you feel pain,, weakness or giddiness? Any nausea?”
Not until the doctor had had up Milo’s bloody shirt and undervest to see what looked like a minor and closing scratch on the skin of the abdomen beneath would he believe his prized mystery man to be unhurt. Only then did he leave for the upstairs, guided by Michelle, the maid.
Maggie pushed her daughter from off her bounteous breasts and said, “Kathleen , . . ?” When the girl did not answer, merely stood snuffling, with downcast eyes, the older woman gave her a shake that rattled her teeth.
“Answer your mother when she speaks to you! If you think you’re too old for me to take down your knickers and paddle you, you’ve got another think coming, young lady!”
“Oh, Mama, he … he killed him. He just tore poor Jaan apart with his bare hands!” Kathleen’s voice had risen to a higher pitch with each succeeding syllable, and so the last four words came out as a near-scream.
Rosaleen resignedly took a step or two forward, her intent to administer a few more wallops of her sovereign Old Country cure for hysteria. But Maggie had her own brand of cure. She once more shook her slender daughter, a shaking that was painful to watch and revealed just how much power lay underneath the adipose tissue.
She nodded. “It’s true, then, isn’t it, Kathleen? You’ve been letting in hoodlums to steal from my boarders, haven’t you? Well, you shameless hussy, answer me?” She gave the girl another shake, of shorter duration but just as powerful if not more so. “Haven’t you?”
“Bububu …” Kathleen blubbered, her tears once more at full flow. “But, M-Mama, it … it wasn’t really stealing. Jaan ex—explained it all to me … to us all. Lenin said that—”
“Lenin, is it?” Pat O’Shea sprang up from his chair. “Is this what that damned university teaches you? I’ll not see you go back to learn more godless Boshevism, daughter. It’s to the nursing school, with your sister, you’ll be going, by God, there or as a novice with the Holy Sisters of Saint Agnes.
“Mrs. O’Shea, we should be ringing up the police to come and fetch that Dutch Jew up abovestairs. I’ll not be having a heathen Bolshevik longer under my roof!”
“Aye!” Rosaleen O’Farrell nodded her firm approval. “It’s doing it now, I’ll be. The jail’s the best place for the likes of that one. Corruptin’ young, witless, Christian girls!”
But Maggie O’Shea would not have the police summoned. Instead, when Dr. Gerald Guiscarde had done all that he could immediately do for Jaan Brettmann, he drove into the business area and brought back from his tailor shop old Josef Brettmann and his eldest son.
When the three men entered the parlor, Milo immediately recognized the youngest, not simply because of the strong familial resemblance to the injured knifeman, but because he recalled him from the office from which he received the papers and to which he returned the translations.
He walked forward, his hand extended, “Sol, what are you doing here?” he asked in Dutch.
The newcomer was slow to take Milo’s hand, took it only gingerly then, and quickly took back his own hand. Not meeting Milo’s gaze, he said softly, Mijnheer Moray, this is my father, whom you had not yet met. The boy, he who robbed you and tried to kill you like some commom thug, that is … is my younger brother, Jaan. The medical doctor explained all that happened while we rode here in his auto. Jaan has humiliated me, our father, all of our family before with his wild, radical ideas and schemes, but never to this extent, never housebreaking and attempted murder.
“I do not, cannot understand him and his university friends. America has been so good to him, to us all, has given us so much that we never would have had in Amsterdam or anywhere else. How could he have done, have even thought to do, such a horribleness?
“I do not know what your losses have been, but we— my father and I—will assuredly repay them. It may take time, but you will be fully repaid by the Brettmann family.”
He turned, “Papa, dit is Mijnheer Moray.” Then, switching languages, he added, “Mr. Moray speaks also Yiddish and Hebreish, Papa.”
The little old man was tiny. Shorter than either son, neither of whom was of average height, shorter even than the girl, Kathleen. He wore thick-lensed, wire-framed spectacles high on the bridge of a Roman nose, was cleanshaven and utterly bald. He was slightly hunchbacked and peered up at Milo from dark eyes full of tears, and a lump of pity blocked Milo’s throat.
With the agreement of all concerned parties, the police were never summoned or even notified of the incident. When, a few days later, Jaan Brettmann emerged from the hospital, he was met by Sol, who gave him a packed suitcase, a one-way railroad ticket to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the address of his father’s first cousin by marriage, Isaak Sobelsky, a jeweler. True to his word, Pat O’Shea saw Kathleen yanked from out the university and ensconced in the hospital nursing school, the only other option offered by her furious parents being Holy Orders. A week or so after his erring, youngest son had been sent off to well-earned exile in the East, old Mr. Brettmann suffered a stroke, which, though it did not quite kill him, left his entire right side paralyzed, useless, making Sol the sole support of his father, his aged mother and his two younger sisters.