“How can you call a man 4F when he’s forever battling and drinking and—” They both burst out laughing and I knew instinctively I had asked another foolish question. I am not as naive as they think. If somebody didn’t ask the foolish questions, what would they do with their clever answers? “All right, pray, what is a 4F op?”
“Elementary, my dear Watsie,” said my roommate. “An operative whose activities consist of Firewater, Fisticuffs, Facts-of-life and Financial remuneration.”
“The Fee Fight Fizz and Fiddle boys,” said Samantha, moving restlessly around the room in search of a certain magazine, which I had hidden in the wastebasket. “Jeanie Watson, your face is a thermometer. Every time I get warm it registers.” And reaching into the basket, she drew out the April Official Crossword. I prayed for something to happen before she did all the Diagramless.
“Some day I must write a monograph on the deterioration of the pure deductive method. Anybody care for a jujube?” Shirley drew from the pocket of her bathrobe a round cloisonné box which I had never seen. “Ah, Watsie, I forgot to show you this little souvenir from Mile. Lestrade, in return for my assistance in the matter of the Irene Adler papers.”
“You found the missing page?” Irene had handed in her French quiz in record time; but when Mile, went to mark the papers, all Irene’s irregular verbs were missing.
Shirley smiled, making a tent of her long fingers. “Quite simply. It had slipped through the slit in the desk.”
“But Mile, searched both her desk and Irene’s!”
“And I searched the desk next to Irene’s. I had observed who was seated beside her. Naturally I did not reveal the name of the culprit. Because I am certain Raffles Jr. would have returned the page had not Irene handed in her papers before he finished cribbing the verbs.”
“And because you’ve got A Thing on Raffles. That’s why you noticed where he was sitting.” Sometimes Sammy Spade looks exactly like a blonde Satan.
“I am in the habit of observing,” Shirley remarked coldly. All emotions and particularly That One are alien to her logical, precise mind. “Raffles Jr. interests me, but not in the way you imply.”
“At least he’s not a drip,” said Sammy, her yellow-gray eyes growing dreamy.
“Why, Sammy!” I exclaimed. “I thought you had A Thing on Harry Sutherland!”
“Sutherland is a drip,” said Samantha.
“Since when—??”
“Since Mrs. Sutherland caught them together behind the ice house. Of course Sammy only went there to hear some of his poems. I suspect much of her recent activity springs from this same interest in poetry,” Shirley went on drily, moving out of Sammy’s reach. “Have you succeeded in uncovering where Sutherland went the weekend he was missing from his home?” Most of us live at the dorms, but Sutherland’s mother has a house down the road, so he’s a day student. Quite handsome too, very much the John Garfield type, if you can imagine Garfield writing poems.
“Who cares!” Sammy dropped the magazine, thank heaven.
“As fellow-students of the Edgar Allan Poe School, we all do. Don’t run away, Sammy, we are about to have another visitor and to learn something of interest, or I am very much mistaken.”
Looking over her shoulder I saw Regina Fortune drop her bike, just as a church clock bonged down the road. Reggie hesitated, looking wistfully toward town. The school lies just outside of Shamusburg, in Dicks County, Pennsylvania. Then, feeling our gaze, she shrugged resignedly and continued into our dorm. “When Regina resists the 4:30 impulse toward tea, clotted cream and raspberries at the Snack Shop, it is certain she has a perturbing problem. A mental case, is it not?” Shirley inquired as Reggie entered and fell across my daybed.
“Oh my sacred aunt. Definitely mental. Most certainly mental. However.” She threw a startled look at Shirley. “How’dye know I was at Sutherland’s?”
“Had you been to Shamusburg you would have arrived from the South. But you entered the Campus through the North gate. Now, the road to the north is singularly lacking in attraction, except for exercise, which you abhor.” (Reggie is almost as fond of her creature comforts as Nerissa Wolfe, who will be a perfect elephant some day.) “The mere fact of your stirring at all implies a matter of food, which lies to the south; or daffodils, which are opening on the Campus; or cats, of which we possess six since Cyrus settled the moot question of his sex by quintupling; or illness, which moves your tender heart to do battle with your lethargy. Of course, Sister Brown is ill, but had you been calling on the Quakers, you would not have worn your most revealing pullover and all eleven bangle bracelets. Therefore, having seen Mrs. Sutherland going into Dean Dupin’s office (to confer, no doubt, on her son’s absence from school) we assume the simple and obvious. While the tigress is away, the cubs will play.”
“Reggie!” I cried, “you haven’t got A Thing on Sutherland?”
“No. Oh no. Mind doesn’t work that way. Not my mind. Interestin’ muddle of contradict’ry facts. Natural impulse to put ’em in order. Just the natural woman, burnin’ to be useful. Me.”
“And have you learned the reason for his mysterious disappearance the last weekend in January, and his even more mysterious illness?”
“His grandfather had a stroke, and that’s where he went,” I told them. “And Elsie Queen says he’s just suffering from too much mother.”
“My dear girls,” murmured Reggie, settling her comfortable curves into the uncomfortable curves of my daybed, “oh my dear girls. Why are parents? I wish I liked the human race, I wish I liked its silly face. However. More here than meets the eye. Yes. Not a nice case. No. However. Unsportin’ to betray a confidence.”
“Do you mean that Sutherland confided in you?”
“Watsie the Eternal Stooge,” said Sammy Spade. “Nobody confided in me, so you’re welcome. Harry-Karry Sutherland is dripping into a decline over a distant Hollywood glimmer whose initials are A.G.”
“You mean Hollywood Glamour, don’t you?”
“I mean Glimmer. Because she’s no star, And no very Bright Light would write letters to a drip. Why anybody would be calling him up Long Distance — that’s the Great Sutherland Mystery.”
“Some girl has been calling him from Hollywood? How do you know?”
“Oh, I get around.” She certainly does. She gets around waitresses and soda jerkers and a boy in the telegraph office and one girl at the telephone exchange, so they’ll tell her all sorts of things which she can’t deduce like Shirley. “When the letters and calls fffft, so did Sutherland. Why waste sympathy on a drip?”
“My dear Sammy. Oh my dear Sammy. Doosid insolent judgin’ without facts. Doosid stoopid. Any eclairs left?” Which was certainly a sillier question than I ever ask. Reggie’s round face looked positively plaintive.
Sammy was tearing around the room looking for my hairbrush, on which I was sitting. It was not very comfortable, but she has no respect for Private Property.
“You will find a spare comb in the bathroom,” said Shirley, getting into her tweed slacks. “And wait for us, we’re going with you.”
Reggie groaned and I tied a candy ribbon around my hair, because you never know who’ll be in the Snack Shop. But when we got our bikes, Sammy’s was nowhere in sight, and neither was she. “Unless we hasten, our Sammy will have all the cream,” said Shirley making off at top speed.
But she was riding north instead of south. Reggie called after her — “Shirley! No. No. Come back. Oh my only aunt. What’ll he think—” And she actually put on a burst of speed, but of course she is no match for Shirley Holmes. I asked no questions, needing all my breath to keep them in sight. The road is all hills and sharp turns. Rounding the last one, we saw Sammy Spade about to enter the Sutherland gate!