“Mr. Smith,” cried a horrified voice, “what are you doing?”
Ellery guiltily dropped a dustcover as Hermione Wright rushed in, her cheeks flushed and her gray hair no longer sleek. ”Don’t you dare touch a thing! Alberta, come in. Mr. Smith won’t bite you.” A bashful Amazon shuffled in. ”Mr. Smith, this is Alberta Manaskas. I’m sure you’ll find her most satisfactory. Alberta, don’t stand there. Start the upstairs!” Alberta fled.
Ellery murmured his gratitude and sank into a chintz-cloaked chair as Mrs. Wright attacked the room about him with terrifying energy.
“We’ll have this in apple-pie order in a jiffy! By the way, I trust you don’t mind. On my trip into town to fetch Alberta, I happened to drop into the Record office¯whoo! this dust!¯and had a confidential chat with Frank Lloyd. The editor and publisher, you know.”
Ellery’s heart scuttled itself.
“By the way, I also took the liberty of giving Logan’s a grocery and meat order for you. Although, of course, you’ll dine with us tonight. Oh, dear, did I forget . . . ? Electricity . . . gas . . . water . . . No, I attended to everything. Oh, the telephone! I’ll do that first thing tomorrow. Well, as I was saying, I knew that no matter how hard we tried, sooner or later everyone would know you’re in Wrightsville, Mr. Smith, and of course as a newspaperman, Frank would have to do a story on you, so I thought I’d better ask Frank as a personal favor not to mention in his write-up that you’re the famous author¯Patty baby! Carter! Oh, my darlings, I have such a surprise for you!”
Mr. Queen rose, fumbling for his jacket.
His only coherent thought was that she had eyes the color of brook water bubbling in the sun.
“So you’re the famous author,” said Patricia Wright, looking at him with her head cocked. ”When Pop told Carter and me just now what Mother had snagged, I thought I’d meet a baggy-pantsed poet with a hangdog look, melancholy eyes, and a pot. I’m pleased.”
Mr. Queen tried to look suave and mumbled something.
“Isn’t it wonderful, dearest?” cried Hermy. ”You must forgive me, Mr. Smith. I know you think I’m terribly provincial. But I really am overwhelmed. Pat dear, introduce Carter.”
“Carter! Darling, I’m so sorry. Mr. Smith, Mr. Bradford.” Shaking hands with a tall young man, intelligent-looking but worried, Ellery wondered if he were worried about how to hold on to Miss Patricia Wright. He felt an instant sympathy.
“I suppose,” said Carter Bradford politely, “we must all seem provincial to you, Mr. Smith. Fiction or nonfiction?”
“Fiction,” said Ellery. So it was war.
“I’m pleased,” said Pat again, looking Ellery over. Carter frowned; Mr. Queen beamed. ”I’ll do this room, Muth . . . You won’t be hurting my feelings, Mr. Smith, if after we’ve stopped interfering in your life, you change things around again. But for now¯”
As he watched Pat Wright setting his house in order under Carter Bradford’s suspicious eye, Ellery thought: May the saints grant me calamities like this each blessed day. Carter, my boy, I’m sorry, but I’m cultivating your Patty!
His good humor was not dispelled even when J. C. Pettigrew hurried back from town with his luggage and flourished the last edition of the Wrightsville Record.
Frank Lloyd, Publisher and Editor, had kept his word to Hermione Wright only technically.
He had said nothing about Mr. Smith in the body of the news item except that he was “Mr. Ellery Smith of New York.”
But the headline on the story ran:
Famed Author to Live in Wrightsville!
Chapter 4
The Three Sisters
Mr. Ellery “Smith” was a sensation with the haut monde on the Hill and the local intelligentsia: Miss Aikin, the Librarian, who had studied Greek; Mrs. Holmes, who taught Comparative Lit at Wrightsville High; and, of course, Emmeline DuPre, known to the irreverent as the “Town Crier,” who was nevertheless envied by young and old for having the miraculous good fortune to be his neighbor. Emmy DuPre’s house was on Ellery’s other side.
Automobile traffic suddenly increased on the Hill. Interest became so hydra-headed that Ellery would have been unmoved if the Wrightsville Omnibus Company had started running a sightseeing bus to his door.
Then there were Invitations. To tea, to dinner, to luncheon; and one¯from Emmeline DuPre¯asking him to breakfast, “so that we may discuss the Arts in the coolth of a Soft Morning, before the Dew vanishes from the Sward.”
Ben Danzig, High Village Rental Library and Sundries, said he had never had such a rush on Fine Stationery.
So Mr. Queen began to look forward to escaping with Pat in the mornings, when she would call for him dressed in slacks and a pullover sweater and take him exploring through the County in her little convertible. She knew everybody in Wrightsville and Slocum Township, and introduced him to people named variously O’Halleran, Zimbruski, Johnson, Dowling, Goldberger, Venuti, Jacquard, Wladislaus, and Broadbeck¯journeymen machinists, toolers, assembly-line men, farmers, retailers, hired hands, white and black and brown, with children of unduplicated sizes and degrees of cleanliness. In a short time, through the curiously wide acquaintanceship of Miss Wright, Mr. Queen’s notebook was rich with funny lin-gos, dinner-pair details, Saturday-night brawls down on Route 16, square dances and hep-cat contests, noon whistles whistling, lots of smoke and laughing and pushing, and the color of America, Wrightsville edition.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Ellery said one morning as they returned from Low Village. ”You seem so much more the country-club, church-social, Younger-Set type of female. How come, Pat?”
“I’m that, too,” grinned Pat. ”But I’m a Sociology Major, or I was¯got my degree in June; and I guess I just can’t help practicing on the helpless population. If this war keeps up¯”
“Milk Fund?” asked Ellery vaguely. ”That sort of thing?”
“Barbarian! Milk Funds are Muth’s department. My dear man, sociology is concerned with more than calcium for growing bones. It’s the science of civilization. Now take the Zimbruskis¯”
“Spare me,” moaned Mr. Queen, having met the Zimbruskis. ”By the way, what does Mr. Bradford, your local Prosecutor, think of all this, Patty?”
“Of me and sociology?”
“Of me and you.”
“Oh.” Pat tossed her hair to the wind, looking pleased. ”Cart’s jealous.”
“Hmm. Look here, my little one¯”
“Now don’t start being noble,” said Pat. ”Trouble with Cart, he’s taken me for granted too long. We’ve practically grown up together. Do him good to be jealous.”
“I don’t know,” smiled Ellery, “that I entirely relish the role of love-irritant.”
“Oh, please!” Pat was shocked. ”I like you. And this is more fun.” Suddenly, with one of her quick sidelong glances: “You know what people are saying, incidentally¯or don’t you?”
“What now?”
“You told Mr. Pettigrew that you’re a famous writer¯”
“Mr. Pettigrew supplied the adjective ‘famous’ all by himself.”