Chapter 7

Seventy-five miles south of Chicago there is a whistle-stop called Shipmont. (No ship has ever been anywhere near it; neither has a mountain.) It lives because of a small college; the college, in turn, owes its maintenance to an installation of great interest to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Shipmont is served by two trains a day—which stop only when there is a passenger to get on or off, which isn’t often. These passengers, generally speaking, are oddballs carrying attaché cases or eager young men carrying miniature slide rules.

But on this day came a woman and a little girl.

Their total visible possessions were two battered suitcases and one battered trunk. The little girl was neatly dressed, in often-washed and mended clothing; she carried a small covered basket, and there were breadcrumbs visible on the lid. She looked bewildered, shy and frightened. She was.

The mother was thirty, though there were lines of worry on her forehead and around her eyes that made her look older. She wore little makeup and her clothing had been bought for wear instead of for looks. She looked around, leaned absently down to pat the little girl and straightened as the station-master came slowly out.

“Need anything, ma’am?” He was pleasant enough. Janet Bagley appreciated that; life had not been entirely pleasant for her for some years.

“I need a taxicab, if there is one.”

“There is. I run it after the train gets in for them as ain’t met. You’re not goin’ to the college?” He pronounced it “collitch.”

Janet Bagley shook her head and took a piece of paper from her bag. “Mr. Charles Maxwell, Rural Route Fifty-three, Martin’s Hill Road,” she read. Her daughter began to whimper.

The station-master frowned. “Hum,” he said, “that’s the Herm—er, d’you know him?”

Mrs. Bagley said: “I’ve never met him. What kind of a man is he?”

That was the sort of question the station-master appreciated. His job was neither demanding nor exciting; an opportunity to talk was worth having. He said cheerfully, “Why, I don’t rightly know, ma’am. Nobody’s ever seen him.”

“Nobody?”

“Nope. Nobody. Does everything by mail.”

“My goodness, what’s the matter with him?”

“Don’t rightly know, ma’am. Story is he was once a professor and got in some kind of big explosion. Burned the hide off’n his face and scarred up his hands something turrible, so he don’t want to show himself. Rented the house by mail, pays his rent by mail. Orders stuff by mail. Mostly not real U-nited States Mail, y’know, because we don’t mind dropping off a note to someone in town. I’m the local mailman, too. So when I find a note to Herby Wharton, the fellow that owns the general store, I drop it off. Margie Clark over at the bank says he writes. Gets checks from New York from publishing companies.” The station-master looked around as if he were looking for Soviet spies. “He’s a scientist, all right. He’s doin’ something important and hush-hush up there. Lots and lots of boxes and packin’ cases I’ve delivered up there from places like Central Scientific and Labotory Supply Company. Must be a smart feller. You visitin’ him?”

“Well, he hired me for housekeeper. By mail.” Mrs. Bagley looked puzzled and concerned.

Little Martha began to cry.

“It’ll be all right,” said the station-master soothingly. “You keep your eye open,” he said to Mrs. Bagley. “Iff’n you see anything out of line, you come right back and me and the missus will give you a lift. But he’s all right. Nothin’ goin’ on up there that I know of. Fred Riordan—he’s the sheriff—has watched the place for days and days and it’s always quiet. No visitors. No nothin’. Know what I think? I think he’s experimenting with something to take away the burn scars. That’s whut I think. Well, hop in and I’ll drive you out there.”

“Is it going to cost much?”

“Nothin’ this trip. We’ll charge it to the U-nited States Mail. Got a package goin’ out. Was waitin’ for something else to go along with it, but you’re here and we can count that. This way to the only taxicab service in Shipmont.”

The place looked deserted. It was a shabby old clapboard house; the architecture of the prosperous farmer of seventy-five years ago. The grounds were spacious but the space was filled with scrub weeds. A picket fence surrounded the weeds with uncertain security. The windows—those that could be seen, that is—were dirty enough to prevent seeing inside with clarity, and what transparency there was left was covered by curtains. The walk up the “lawn” was flagstone with crabgrass between the stones.

The station-master unshipped the small trunk and stood it just inside the fence. He parked the suitcases beside it. “Never go any farther than this,” he explained. “So far’s I know, you’re the first person to ever head up thet walk to the front door.”

Mrs. Bagley rapped on the door. It opened almost instantly.

“I’m—” then Mrs. Bagley dropped her eyes to the proper level. To the lad who was standing there she said, “I’m Mrs. Bagley. Your father—a Mr. Charles Maxwell is expecting me.”

“Come in,” said Jimmy Holden. “Mr. Maxwell—well, he isn’t my father. He sent me to let you in.”

Mrs. Bagley entered and dropped her suitcases in the front hall. Martha held back behind her mother’s skirt. Jimmy closed the door and locked it carefully, but left the key in the keyhole with a gesture that Mrs. Bagley could not mistake. “Please come in here and sit down,” said James Holden. “Relax a moment.” He turned to look at the girl. He smiled at her, but she cowered behind her mother’s skirt as if she wanted to bury her face but was afraid to lose sight of what was going on around her.

“What’s your name?” asked James.

She retreated, hiding most of her face. Mrs. Bagley stroked her hair and said, “Now, Martha, come on. Tell the little boy your name.”

Purely as a matter of personal pride, James Holden objected to the “little boy” but he kept his peace because he knew that at eight years old he was still a little boy. In a soothing way, James said, “Come on out, Martha. I’ll show you some girl-type toys we’ve got.”

The girl’s head emerged slowly, “I’m Martha Bagley,” she announced.

“How old are you?”

“I’m seven.”

“I’m eight,” stated James. “Come on.”

Mrs. Bagley looked around. She saw that the dirt on the windows was all on the outside. The inside was clean. So was the room. So were the curtains. The room needed a dusting—a most thorough dusting. It had been given a haphazard lick-and-a-promise cleanup not too long ago, but the cleanup before that had been as desultory as the last, and without a doubt the one before and the one before that had been of the same sort of half-hearted cleaning. As a woman and a housekeeper, Mrs. Bagley found the room a bit strange.

The furniture caught her eye first. A standard open bookcase, a low sofa, a very low cocktail-type table. The chair she stood beside was standard looking, so was the big easy chair opposite. Yet she felt large in the room despite its old-fashioned high ceiling. There were several low footstools in the room; ungraceful things that were obviously wooden boxes covered with padding and leatherette. The straight chair beside her had been lowered; the bottom rung between the legs was almost on the floor.