"Huh?"
"I mean when you were a kid." No answer. "For instance, didn't you ever want to drive the engine?"
'The train engine?" Duff nodded. "Naw," said Mr. Johnson.
"I guess you'd just as soon have a lot of money," said Duff artfully.
"What for?"
"To spend."
"Naw. I mean what for?"
"Beg pardon?"
"Wadd'ya want me to do?"
"Nothing. Why?"
"Thought you had a job," said Mr. Johnson.
"Would you kill somebody if I paid you for it?"
Mr. Johnson's dark face didn't change. "Who?"
"Anybody."
"Innes, hey?"
Duff looked at him. "What makes you say that?"
134
Mr. Johnson scratched himself. "That's whatcha want to know," he stated.
Duff admitted "Yes. Well?"
"What's tlie matter with Innes?" said Mr. Johnson. "He gimme a dollar."
"Suppose somebody gave you more than that?"
Duff searched the brown face. It was expressionless. "Listen," said Mr. Johnson, "do it yourself."
Alice stifled a giggle. Duff turned and saw her. He got up and jouied her in the kitchen.
"How's the poor Indian?" she whispered.
"Lo," said Duff ruefully, "now, I think he's kidding me."
They went toward the front of the house together. Alice looked up at Duffs face and caught him with the feathers of his spirit ruffled. "Is he super-naive or is he super-subtle? Alice, he's got the Indian sign on me."
"Well, I don't believe it," said Alice stoudy. "What shall we do now?"
"Shall we beard Maud?"
"One could," giggled Alice. "But I won't be able to search her closet right under her eyes."
"No. By the way, how does one communicate with her?"
"Can you talk on your fingers?''
"No. You must be my secretary."
"Are you going to try any tricks?"
"Oh, certainly."
"All right," said Alice. "Oh, don't tell me, let me guess. It's great sport, not knowing what you're going to do next."
"Did I give you an A?" asked DufL "I should have. Forward."
Outside Maud's door, Alice said, "I don't know what we're supposed to do. She wouldn't hear a knock."
"Open it and look in," suggested Duff. "If she isn't decent, you can warn me and we'U go away."
Alice turned the knob and the door moved. She looked in almost fearfully. The room was empty.
"Nobody."
"Go ahead," said Duff. "Quick."
When they were inside Duff said, "Sit down and beginto write a note, explaining that we called, anything . . ."
Alice saw one of Maud's pads and found a pencil in her pocket. She could see, out of the comer of her eye. Duff in the closet.
"Dear Miss Maud: I brought Mr. Duff here to see you but you were out" How silly I "When you find this will you please . . .'' Please what?
"She's coming!"
Duff seemed to conjure himself across the room, so quickly was he there, standing Innocendy and rather languidly at her side.
Maud came in pell-mell The doorknob struck the wall as she flung the door open. She stopped when she saw them.
"Hello. What are you doing in here? Hey?"
Alice rose and smiled and handed her the unfinished note. She motioned toward Duff. Duff bowed. Alice felt she ought to cmtsy. It seemed a long time that they bowed and bobbed their heaxls, before Maud's eyes went down to the writing.
"Name's Duff, ehr' she said. "How ja do. Sit down if you want to. What's up?"
Duff said to Alice, "Write that I wanted to meet her because I am interested in the early history of Ogaunee."
Ahce wrote.
Meanwhile, Maud said, "I know who you are now. You're the fella that's staying down at Susan's."
She plunged herself down in a low chair beside the fireplace, imfolded a paper napkin she had in her hand, revealing a pUe of five or six pieces of Melba toast.
"Isabel says I've got to reduce," she cackled. "Can you tie that?"
Alice handed her the note.
"What do you mean, early history?" the woman demanded in a flash. "How old do you think I am?"
"I'm sorry," said Duff.
Maud guffawed. "I don't know anything about all that stuff. You ask GerL She can talk."
"He did," wrote Alice.
"Talked your ear off, I'll bet," Maud said.
She crunched into the toast Alice looked around the room for the first time. It was a mess. Things were piled around in a disorder so thorough as to seem maxl. Cardboard boxes and paper-wrapped packages, some half-opened, stood on the seats of chairs. Three pairs of shoes and an uneven number of varicolored stockings lay helter skelter under the bed on a floor thick with dust The bed itself wore its spread askew, and there were four pillows.
The mantel held three cracker boxes, unclosed, an empty Coca-Cola botde and an imwa&hed glass. The grate was full of trash, mcluding orange peel dry and stiff with age. The ruffled curtains at the windows were fairly clean, but the tie-back was gone from one of them and it sagged from the rod. Its ruffle drooped. A pint milk bottle stood on another sill, and the comic section of an old newspaper had been stuffed haphazardly in the crack at the side of the lower pane.
An apple core lay near a dirty hairbrush on the dresser, and hairpins mixed with face powder in the pin tray. Alice shuddered. Sound, she thought. Something to hear. She looked for an alarm clock. There was a clock on the dresser, but it had no hand to set for any alarm. No phonograph here. A pile of magazines, three novels with a pair of lovers embracing each other on each jacket, pictures. A calendar print of "The Horsefair" with a mustache penciled on one of the horses! The mirror was smudged and streaked and reflected crookedly, as if the composition of the glass was muddled.
Meanwhile, Maud hooked with her toe a footstool with a tapestry cover that was frayed and soiled, and put her feet up on it. She was watching them rather maliciously. Alice bit her Up. The atmosphere in this room reeked of Maud.
"Write," said Duff, "that you thought you heard somebody in the house last night. Ask if tiiere's room for me to stay here. Say you think there ought to be another mail."
Alice wrote.
Maud spoke. She knew perfectly well that something was being prepared for her to consider, but she chose to speak and upset the order of communications. "What do you want to know about early history?"
Now Alice's note was irrelevant. "This is the devil of an interview," said Duff. "Show it to her."
"No room," croaked Maud, having read. "What do you mean, another man? There's three abeady. If you count Innes. Two and a half, say." She roared.
Alice looked helpless. Maud stopped laughing and took another piece of Melba toast.
"She won't take the bait, will she?" said Duff without moving his lips much, though his voice was clear and penetrating. "Stubborn old owl, I'd say."
Maud chewed on.
Duff's voice dropped to a near whisper. "Shall we tell her?"
"What?" whispered Alice.
Maud's finger investigated a tooth.
"About the telephone call in the night," Duff said very quiedy.
Maud's light-colored eyes rested vacantly on the wall.
"I don't know." Alice tried to think up some embroidery of her own. "Do you think it's safe?"
Duff said, "Write and ask her if she knows anything about what happened last night."
Maud said, in the middle of his last word, "Say, nobody was in this house last night, were they?"
"Write, yes, you think so. Write that Innes thinks so."
Maud snorted as she read. "Innes is a fraidy cat, always was. Jump at his shadow."
Alice wrote, "Did you see or hear anything?"
"Well, I was reading a book. Ehdn't see anything. Can't hear, you know. Rained, though, didn't it? Lemme see. Isabel went through."
"Isabel!" Duff looked at a door m the far wall. "That communicates with Isabel's room?"
"It must, I guess," said Alice. "We didn't know that, did we?"
"I must have the time. Isabel was the last one to be out of her room. She answered the phone. Ask her the time."
"The time? But Gertrude says she went upstairs right after being in to see her, so we know the time, don't we?"