“It isn’t that. I’m single and I’m alone in the house. Even Sam sleeps out over the garage.”
“Och.” She tossed that off like a puffball. “The dog’ll be chaperon enough.”
“Well... er... won’t your people worry about you if you stay away overnight?”
Something like a choked laugh sounded in her throat. “Oh, sure, three days from now. They’re in New Mexico. By the time they hear I wasn’t home, I’ll be home all over again.”
He gave Sam a look and Sam gave him one. “Fix up that ground-floor room that has the cot in it for the lady, Sam,” he said finally.
“Freddy Cameron’s the name,” the childish-looking figure ensconced in the chair supplied. “Short for Frederica, you know.”
They sat there in silence, waiting for Sam to get the room ready. Holmes sat staring down at the floor, she sat staring at him with all the unconcealed candor of a child.
“Why do you keep all those rifles and shotguns stacked up in the corner?”
“Because I do a lot of hunting when I’m not working.”
“Are they loaded?”
“Sure they’re loaded.” He waited a moment and then he added: “They give a terrible kickback when they’re fired.”
“G’night, Mr. Holmes and lady,” Sam called on his way out. The front door closed after him.
The silence became almost cottony, the sort of thing that can be tasted in the mouth.
“Why don’t we say something?” she suggested after about a quarter of an hour.
His eyes flicked over her, then down to the floor again, for answer. There was something wary about the slight deflection.
She bunched her shoulders defensively, looked behind her. “Something about this place, it gets you. It’s like — something was going to happen.”
“It’s like,” he concurred curtly, and got up and left her without anything further. He moved up the stairs to the upper floor with almost painful deliberation, head bowed as though he were listening intently.
A cooling log ash exploded in the fireplace; his shoulders squared off, then relaxed again. Then the heavy, oily stillness came rolling back again and obliterated the momentary sound.
His door closed, up above somewhere.
Sam came in and found them sitting at the table together.
“What’s this?” he cried with mock outrage that had an undercurrent of pique to it.
“The Number Two Boy rustled it up for him this morning. But she has no luck, he won’t eat.”
“He’s thinking of a plot,” Sam suggested.
Holmes gave him a startled look, as though the remark was disconcertingly shrewd. He filled a saucer from his cup, put it on the floor. The German shepherd came over and noisily siphoned it up.
“Well, is the plot finished yet?” she wanted to know presently.
“Incomplete,” Holmes said. He had been watching the dog. “But I’ll get it later.” He took up his cup, drained it, held it out to her for more.
He got up, threw her a brief, “See you tonight,” and went into the living room.
“What does he mean, ‘See you tonight’?” she asked Sam blankly. “What am I supposed to be, invisible until then?”
“He’s going to produce now.” Sam went in after him, as though his presence was required to set things in order. She watched from the doorway. Sam shifted the “inspiration chair,” cocked his head at it, readjusted the chair with hair-line precision.
“Does that have to be in the exact same place each time?” she asked incredulously. “I suppose if it was two inches out of line he couldn’t think straight.”
“Shh!” Sam silenced her imperiously. “If it ain’t even with that diagonal pattern of the carpet, it distracts him.”
Holmes was standing looking out the window, already lost to the world. He made an abrupt backhand gesture of dismissal. “Get out! Here it comes now.”
Sam tiptoed out with almost ludicrous haste, frenziedly motioning her before him. She stood there a moment outside the closed door, unabashedly eavesdropping. Holmes’s voice filtered through in a droning singsong, talking into the dictating machine:
“Chinook mushed on through the snow wastes, face a mask of vengeance under his fur parka—”
Sam wouldn’t leave her in peace even there. “Don’t stand this close, you’re liable to make the floor creak.”
She turned away reluctantly, limping on her one slippered foot. “So that’s how it’s done. And there must never be the slightest variation in detail, not even in the way his chair stands.”
Sam poised himself, watch in hand, outside the door, one fist upraised in striking position. He waited until the sixtieth second had ticked off, then brought his fist down. “Five o’clock!” he called warningly.
Holmes came out haggard, hair awry, shirt open down to his abdomen, cuffs open, shoelaces untied, even his belt buckle unfastened.
A prim, mousy little figure of a middle-aged woman, sitting under the antlered hat rack near the door, stood up. She wore an ill-fitting tweed suit, steel-rimmed spectacles, and had her graying hair drawn tightly back into an unsightly little knot at the nape of her neck.
“I’m the new typist, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Trent says he hopes I’ll be more satisfactory than the last one he sent you.”
The Cameron girl had come to the doorway of her room, opposite them, drawn by the sound of his emergence.
“I’m afraid the damage has been done already,” he said with a glance at her. “Did you come prepared to stay?”
“Yes.” She indicated a venerable Gladstone bag on the floor beside her. “Mr. Trent explained the work would have to be done on the premises.”
“Well, I’m glad you got here. I’ve already done six chapters into the machine. I don’t know how fast you are, but it’ll take you at least three or four days to catch up.”
“I’m more accurate and painstaking than I am speedy,” she let him know primly. “I pride myself on never having had so much as a comma misplaced on any of my typescripts.” She folded her hands limply together, dangled them out before her.
“Sam, carry Miss — I didn’t get your name.”
“Miss Kitchener.”
“Carry Miss Kitchener’s bag up to the front second-floor room.”
The Cameron girl came toward him, a look of sulky disapproval on her face, as soon as he was alone. “So we’re going to have Lydia Pinkham with us for a while.”
“You seem put out.”
“I am.” She wasn’t being playful about it, either; she was seething. “A woman likes the run of the place. This was ideal.”
He gave her a long, level look. “I’ll bet it was,” he said dryly, turning away at last.
Sam said later, “We’re sure getting a run of women out here! Maybe you better do your work in town, where it’s nice and lonely, after this, Mr. Holmes.”
“I have an idea they’ll be thinning out soon,” Holmes answered, brushing his hair at the mirror.
The three of them sat back after Sam had taken out the dessert plates. Freddy Cameron still had the sulky look on her face. Throughout the meal she had tried, much to his amusement, to give the other woman the impression she was a legitimate member of the household.
“Sam,” he called. And when the man had returned to the doorway, “How long since you’ve had a night off?”
“Pretty long. But ain’t no use in having one out here. There’s no place to go.”
“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll treat you to one in the city. I’ll drive you over to the station when I go out for my usual evening spin. There are some things I want you to stop in and get at the flat in town while you’re there, anyway.”
“I’d sure like that! But will you be able to get along without me, Mr. Holmes?”