We had that other look. Even in a matter of days, the old man had slipped enough so that they were now watching at his bedside in relays. We asked to see Everett Bardon and it was arranged, though, of course, with Lawyer Kent hovering.
Everett was the big surprise. He seemed every inch the respectable and dignified scion of a well-heeled house, a youth schooling himself to occupy with grace the position to which he had been born and training himself up to the responsibilities of that position. I had been looking, of course, for the Larceny for Larks Lad and I had been prepared for anything but so sober and sensible-seeming a young man. I wanted to think that Sing Sing had been all that good for him.
“May I tell you, gentlemen,” Everett said as a starter, “that I do appreciate the kindness you are showing me? I know how busy you are and I know you can do nothing but work according to the rules. I understand that you’re giving me a break and I am grateful for it. May I say thank you?”
“We’d rather you answered questions,” Gibby said gruffly.
Everett answered them and all his answers seemed completely candid. He’d known Brooks at Sing Sing. They had been friends there. Brooks had been released first. Since that time, there had been no communication between them. While we were at it, a door opened and a young woman started into the room. She was youngish. She wasn’t Dorinda Gibbs but she could have been another of Uncle Hep’s blondes. She had the same sort of arresting dye job. On closer inspection, however, it became obvious that any resemblance would end with the dye job. This one was handsome, but she was not the baby-doll type. She had dignity and even a forbidding sort of elegance, an impeccable black suit, impeccable white gloves, the exactly right sort of hat.
“Is this private,” she asked, “or may I come in?”
“If you will forgive us, my dear,” the lawyer began. He never finished.
Everett talked right past him. “It’s private, Sara,” he said, “but it’s as much your business as anyone’s. I’d like you to come in.”
Kent hated it but he could do nothing. She came in. She was there, accordingly, while Everett was explaining that it was one of his beliefs that each person had the inalienable right of going to hell in a hand basket of his own choosing and that, therefore, he had never agreed to any of the family plans for separating his cousin Sara from the husband of her choice. She was still there when he suggested that he would go and sit with his grandfather and he would send his Aunt Agatha out to see us. She heard him ask us to take into consideration the great, if mistaken, concern his aunt felt for him. That, of course, brought up the whole business of Everett’s parole and the record of his cousin’s husband. The lady didn’t take that kindly.
“I’m sorry, Sara,” Everett said, “but you do know Frank has a record. You knew Grandfather had him investigated.”
She snapped at him. She wanted to hear no more about that. She did, however, have to hear a lot more. She heard her Aunt Agatha freely admit that it had been she who was consorting with Cockeye Brooks. Brooks had come to call on Agatha after his release from Sing Sing and he had brought her news of Everett. When it had come to hiring detectives and Emory Kent had chosen a firm more highly regarded for its discretion than for its effectiveness, Miss Bardon had considered such measures grossly insufficient. She had taken matters into her own hands.
“Mr. Brooks,” she boasted, “went to Chicago as my agent Everett knew nothing about it”
The whole plan, in fact, had been hers and it had all gone exactly according to her plan. Brooks provoked Frank Frail. He persisted in provoking the man until Frail attacked him. Now Frail was in Chicago awaiting trial for assault and Sara Frail was in her grandfather’s house where she belonged. All that Agatha still wanted was that her niece should begin acting as though she did indeed belong.
“Go to your grandfather,” she urged. “Take off your hat and those absurd gloves. He’s been asking for you.”
“And my husband?”
“Now, Sara, we’ve been into that.”
“We have. Did Grandfather ask to see my husband?”
“You know how your grandfather feels.”
“And he knows how I feel.”
They kicked it around but the younger woman, wasn’t to be moved. She had been called and she had come. Of necessity, she’d even left her husband for it, but she’d made it clear that she would be accepted with the man she’d married or not at all. Her grandfather had known that from the first and even the fact that her grandfather was now dying made no change in that. The hat and the gloves were her symbols. They would keep her family reminded that she felt herself to be excluded. By excluding her husband, they were excluding her.
She’d taken this stand even before she’d known that it wasn’t just bad luck that had detained Frank Frail in Chicago.
Sara smoothed the gloves over her wrists. “The gloves,” she said, “stay on, now with more reason than ever. They stay on to keep you reminded of the terms on which I am here. I am a visitor. I am a stranger. You seem to think you can take any liberty with the family. Just look at my gloves and remember that I do not consider myself to be family and I allow you to take no liberties with me.” She paused for emphasis. “Or,” she added, “with my husband.”
“It may mean all that to you, my dear,” Agatha said. “To me it is simply childish and ridiculous.”
“And,” Sara added, “when Frank gets to New York, he will come here and stay here with me.”
Agatha laughed. That evidently was a contingency she expected she wouldn’t have to face. She was wrong. That young niece of hers was a woman of steel and Agatha had talked far too much. Sara knew all the right words — perjury and subornation of perjury and conspiracy. A lawyer couldn’t have done a better job of outlining to her aunt the necessity for putting a stop to that farcical affair out in Chicago. When we hauled out of there that time, Sara had Aunt Agatha on the telephone. That redoubtable lady was calling Cockeye Brooks and telling him he would have to pull out on those assault charges.
It was a battle of wills right down to the end and nobody ever knew who won. The old man died without seeing his granddaughter. Sara did bring her husband into the house; but even though the old man had fallen into a coma from which he never again emerged even momentarily, Agatha Bardon had been adamant that her father’s wish should be respected. Old William hadn’t wanted “that man” near him. “That man” wasn’t permitted to come near him. Sara had been equally adamant. She didn’t go where her husband wasn’t wanted. She’d been in the house when the old man died, but she had been in another room.
4.
Why Gibby and I went to the old man’s funeral I’ve never really known. With me it was mainly a matter of simple curiosity. With Gibby it seemed to be something else, a nervous feeling that we had come to that time of which we had been warned. He couldn’t make himself disregard that warning, however absurd it had been.
Be that as it may, from the first it was an arresting occasion. It would have to be with the Bardons. Uncle Hep was there and there was a swarm of Uncle Hep’s blondes. One of the cuties hung on his arm, and in the pews behind him sat all the others. Among them I spotted Dorinda Gibbs and with her another woman, also blond but the only one in the entire covey who looked to be more than a matter of months out of her teens. This one could have been one of Uncle Hep’s babes some twenty years back. When we greeted Dorinda, however, she disabused us. This older babe was her mother but we’d been making a mistake anyone could have made. Mama Gibbs was not a motherly type.