Disappearances, page 22
The room was a shambles. One corner was heaped with empty bottles. Papers were strewn all over the floor around the desk. Dr. Tettinger’s framed oil paintings of ducks and trout had been piled carelessly on the leather couch.
The door to the water closet was locked. I had supposed everyone was in the dining room. Then I remembered that Dr. Tettinger always locked the water closet himself when he had beer cooling inside the stool. Probably Warden hadn’t found the key yet.
Just as I started to leave, the office door opened and Little Gretchen stepped inside. Wild fantasies raced through my mind. Here was an opportunity to redeem myself in her opinion and my own. This was too good to be true.
Little Gretchen shut the door, put a bony finger to her lips and walked past me to the desk. She opened the top drawer and reached up under the bottom panel of the desk top and brought out a piece of adhesive tape to which a key was stuck. Without saying a word she handed me the key and pointed at the water closet. Well, I thought, at least we wouldn’t be interrupted.
I unlocked the door, and discovered that I had been right about the closet being occupied. Tied to the stool in a straitjacket with a large white bandage over his mouth was Dr. Tettinger.
My disappointment was sharp but short-lived. An assignation with Little Gretchen could be arranged any time. I was so angry I could barely unlace the thongs of the straitjacket. I wanted to kill Kinneson, and thought my father probably would when he found out what had happened.
“Thank Christ,” Dr. Tett gasped when I yanked off the gag. “He was going to send me to the lunatic asylum. I came back to get my paintings this afternoon and he hit me from behind. He’s going to send Hank and Harlan too, Billy. They’re coming tonight for us. I need a drink.”
“Wait here,” I said. “Dad’s getting Kinneson drunk. I’m going to tell him. Don’t you worry, Dr. Tett. We’ll fix Kinneson.”
Back in the dining room pandemonium reigned. Everyone who could stand up was dancing. Someone had built up the niggardly little fire in the fireplace into a fine manorial blaze. As good as his word, my father was still playing “The Devil’s Dream.” Warden was leaning back in his chair, leering and drinking out of the Seagram’s bottle.
“He had Dr. Tett tied up in the toilet,” I whispered into my father’s ear. “Little Gretchen gave me the key. They’re coming tonight to take Dr. Tett and Hank and Harlan to the lunatic asylum.”
My father nodded and smiled. He inclined his fiddle toward Warden, who was looking at us suspiciously, and played a rapid series of ingratiating syncopations. “Tell Henry to come over here,” he said to me. “This couldn’t be working out better.”
His leg was swollen nearly twice its normal size and pulsing visibly, perhaps in time with the music, but I had never seen him happier.
The next hour was full of unexpected events. First my father instructed Uncle Henry to go into Tett’s office and call the LaChance brothers at the Common Hotel. “Tell them to get right up here if they want their whiskey,” he said. “Remember now, we ain’t supposed to know their name. Just ask for the two Frenchmen that own the big Buick. Tell them to leave their vehicle down by the barn and come up to the front door.”
“They’re on their way,” Uncle Henry reported five minutes later.
“Good,” my father said, smiling at Warden, who was trying to learn how to play the spoons. He said something else I didn’t catch, and Uncle Henry left the room again and motioned for me to follow him. When we were out in the hall he told me to return and tell Warden two men were waiting in his office to see him.
“What?” Warden said, dropping his spoons on the floor again. “Already? Well, that’s all right if they are. This will be a good example for the others. Tell them I’ll be right in, boy.”
I ran into the office and warned Uncle Henry and Dr. Tettinger that Warden was on his way. As he lurched into the room Uncle Henry pinned his arms to his side. “It’s chilly in here, Superintendent,” he said.
“Just slip this jacket on,” Dr. Tettinger said.
A minute later Warden was locked in the water closet and Dr. Tettinger was making his triumphal entry into the dining room. Everyone cheered. Hank and Harlan fell over each other to be the first to hug him. “I’ll flog you until you can’t stand up if you ever desert us again,” shouted Prof Corbitt. To demonstrate that he meant business he began unfastening his suspenders. His pants collapsed around his ankles, and he joined the general laughter. “Attention, scholars,” he roared. “Aeneas has returned from the underworld.” It was a supreme compliment, which Dr. Tett graciously acknowledged after draining the last of the Seagram’s from the bottle by Warden’s place.
“Rat,” my father called out, “fetch us up some more good cheer from the handcar. Take Mason along to help.”
“Not mine?” Rat said.
“No, no, yours won’t be touched. Where’s R.W., boys?”
“Out of harm’s way,” Uncle Henry said.
“We bundled him up tight,” Dr. Tettinger said. “He won’t catch cold. Good heavens, Quebec Bill. That’s a terrible wound. I didn’t see that at first. What on earth happened?”
“Just a scratch, Tett. I think there’s still a sliver in it. You might bring your tongs when you have a free minute.”
The party gained momentum. Rat and Mason Cobb brought in one of the two milk cans from the handcar. Walter Kittredge got a huge tin washtub and he and Mason and Rat began filling it with whiskey. “Eureka,” shouted Prof Corbitt, stepping out of his trousers and into the tub.
A short while later Uncle Henry ushered in the LaChance brothers. They were wearing their tan coats over double-breasted suits with pronounced bulges under their coats. They stood uncertainly on the edge of the crowd around the table and watched Dr. Tettinger work on my father’s leg.
My father continued fiddling throughout the operation. From time to time he shouted lay advice into Dr. Tettinger’s ear. "Probe deeper, Tett. You ain’t through the hide into the meat yet.”
When Dr. Tettinger finally extracted the slug my father grabbed Prof Corbitt’s flogging suspenders off the table beside him and fired the hunk of lead out of them into the pine mantel above the fireplace, where it imbedded itself half an inch deep, having just missed the head of one of the LaChances. The bootlegger turned to his brother and said in French, “This is a most curious place, eh, André?”
“I do not like this place at all, Origène. I hope that is not our whiskey in the tub with the old man.”
Two stocky men in white uniforms appeared in the doorway. “I’ll handle this for you,” my father said to Dr. Tettinger, who was trying to stanch the flow of blood from the wound. He handed his fiddle to Mason Cobb, who began to scrape away at “The Devil’s Dream.” “Wild Bill, you and Henry lug me over there to greet our newest arrivals.”
“We’re Croggins and Hathaway,” the younger of the two men said. “We’re looking for the superintendent.”
“How do you do?” my father said. “I am Superintendent Kinneson.”
“I’m Croggins, Superintendent. This is Hathaway. We’re from the lunatic asylum. I see what you meant on the phone. Things seem to be a little out of hand here. What happened to your leg?”
“Old Tettinger put the fire poker through it in one of his drunken rampages,” my father said. “He’s tied up in his office now; he won’t be any trouble to you. It’s the other two you’ll have to watch out for. Don’t look straight at them or they’ll know something’s afoot. They’re the two in overcoats standing back by the fireplace. Them are very dangerous, them two.”
“What?” Croggins said. “Them two re-tards you told us about? Don’t worry about them. Show them your bottle, Hathaway. See that little blue bottle of Hathaway’s? That’s chloroform. We’ll slip up behind them and they’ll be out like a light. Then into the restraints and off we go in the van. By midnight they’ll be in their own padded cell.”
Hathaway tapped his bottle. “Great little equalizer, Superintendent. You ought to keep a supply on hand for times like this.”
“Where are the restraints?” my father said.
“Just outside in the hallway,” Hathaway said. “Can you get them out there?”
“That shouldn’t be difficult.”
“Good,” Hathaway said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“That Hathaway,” Croggins said admiringly to my father as his partner stepped into the hall. “He loves a chloroforming more than anything. He’d arrange for his own mother to be committed if he could be the one to put her under. Hathaway studied for years to be an anesthetist, you know. He’d get them to go to sleep pretty good, but they didn’t always wake up.”
Hathaway suddenly reappeared. “Do you have to tell that every time we go out on a call?” he said angrily. “There’s not a grain of truth to that, Superintendent. This is merely the quickest and cleanest way to do a nasty job.”
“Let’s not argue about it, Hathaway,” Croggins said. “If you weren’t damn good at your job you wouldn’t be on the squad to begin with.”
Rat and I carried my father over to the LaChance brothers. Their guns were quite prominent under their coats. “Let’s go get the whiskey,” my father said to them in French.
They looked at Uncle Henry, who nodded.
“Who are those two men?” André said.
“They’re orderlies that work here,” my father said. “They help with the more high-spirited folks. Give them their medicine and put them to sleep and so forth.”
“I like this place less and less,” Origène said.
“You’ll soon be out of it all,” my father said. “Lead on, boys. We’ll be right behind you.”
The LaChances led the way into the hall. Before they had gone five steps Hathaway leaped out from behind a clothes tree, armed with a cloth in each hand. He slammed their heads together with a loud crack and held his cloths over their faces until long after their struggling subsided. Meanwhile Croggins got the straitjackets on them.
“Do you want any help lugging them out to your van?” Uncle Henry said.
“No,” Croggins said. “It’s just like carrying a sack of feed. We’ll meet you in the office.” He slung one of the LaChances over his shoulder and headed down the hall toward the front door. Hathaway followed close behind him with the older brother.
“Dad,” I said, “we can’t send Warden off with them. They’re crazy. There’s no telling what they’ll do to him.”
“There’s no telling what they would have done to Tett and Hank and Harlan,” my father said. “Hen, fetch R.W. out of the toilet and set him up in Tett’s chair.”
Warden Kinneson proved to be less tractable than the LaChance brothers. As soon as he saw Croggins and Hathaway he began to scream that they were committing the wrong man. “I’m the new superintendent,” he shouted.
“I’m Calvin Coolidge,” Hathaway said. “You think we better give this cuckoo a whiff of the sleepy-sleep, Superintendent?”
“I don’t believe it would hurt,” my father said. “He’s apt to rave all the way down the line if you don’t. Next thing you know he’ll be telling you he used to be a game warden.”
“I was,” Warden screamed. “I was a game warden for seven years before being appointed superintendent. That man on the stretcher is an impostor. He’s nothing but a filthy Canuck poacher.”
“Was it after you was King of the Jews that you got to be a warden, or before?” Hathaway inquired, dousing his cloth generously. “The only appointment you’ve got is on the locked ward, Tettinger. Here now. Stop thrashing. Take it like a man.”
Warden went under reluctantly. “He’s a big fleshy one,” Croggins said. “Best we lug him out together, Hathaway.”
My father and Rat and Henry and I accompanied them out to the van and watched them strap Warden in between the LaChance brothers. Hathaway and Croggins kept saying that they had never bagged three at once before. I was beginning to realize that my father, while incapable of a mean or petty thought, could be extremely ruthless on occasion. I despised Warden; my father seemed actually to like him, but had no scruples about sending him to a lunatic asylum that employed lunatics. In part his attitude could be explained by that frontier hardness he preserved to the end, or perhaps it was his sense of humor that led him to such excesses. I don’t know, and maybe I don’t really want to.
It was very cold now, but before we could get my father back inside another opportunity for him to display his ingenuity presented itself. Just as Croggins and Hathaway were getting into the van a man came running up the lane from the barn. “Help,” he shouted while still some distance away. “I’ve been robbed. My train’s been stolen and wrecked.”
“Who on earth is that?” Croggins said.
“That’s Ebenezer Trucott,” my father said. “He was a brakeman on the old St. Johnsbury and Lamoille for years before the big wreck back in twenty-one. After that he come here. Every once in a while he gets the idea his train has been wrecked again.”
Compton rushed up to us. “Get the police,” he panted. “They drove it right into the lake. Hurry, men.”
Suddenly he recognized my father. “You,” he said. “It’s you.”
“Of course it’s me, Ebenezer. Has your train been derailed again? We’ll get it back on the tracks first thing in the morning. Run inside now, your soup’s getting cold.”
Compton sprang for my father with his hands outstretched. There wasn’t anything Uncle Henry and I could do without dropping the stretcher, but Croggins and Hathaway were both accustomed to acting quickly. Croggins grabbed the infuriated engineer, whom Hathaway proceeded to anesthetize with great expedition.
“What should we do with this one. Superintendent?” Croggins said. “We don’t have any more room inside the van. Not unless we stack them up like cordwood.”
“We don’t have papers for him either,” Hathaway said. “We can’t take him without papers.”
“This is an emergency,” my father said. “You saw him try to throttle me. We’ll tie him to the roof. Wouldn’t you like to bring in four all to once? That would be a record that would stand for a good while.”
“Tie him to the roof?”
“Certainly. Like a deer. Heist him right up there, Croggins, before he wakes up.”
“I don’t think he’ll be waking up for some time,” Hathaway said. “I used up the rest of the bottle on him. We’d be heroes, Croggins. Let’s do it. Four to one haul ain’t nothing to sneeze at.”
“Papers be damned,” Croggins said, lifting Compton onto the van roof. “Have you got some rope, Superintendent?”
“I think we can spare a few lengths,” my father said. He turned to Rat. “Orderly, fetch up a piece of that rope from the pack basket, if you will. Bring back a small token of our esteem from the milk can for these fine gentlemen.”
After Compton had been secured on the van roof, spread-eagled like a dead bear, my father presented Croggins and Hathaway with two bottles of Seagram’s.
“Very nice to meet you,” Croggins said, shaking his hand.
“Yes,” my father said. “I hope we can get together again under more pleasant circumstances.”
“I can’t imagine any more pleasant circumstances,” Hathaway said, shaking hands.
“You don’t know what a service you’ve done me,” my father said.
Hathaway held up the empty blue bottle and tapped it.
“That Hathaway,” Croggins said.
As they drove off I said, “Won’t Compton get cold up there when he wakes up?”
“I expect he will,” Uncle Henry said.
Back in the dining room everyone seemed to be thriving under the restoration of Dr. Tettinger. Fred Stillwater was accompanying Mason Cobb on the concertina and many people were still dancing. Someone had gotten Prof Corbitt’s doctoral robe and hood. Attired in all his academic resplendence, he sat in the washtub and presided over the distribution of the whiskey. Little Gretchen got up on the table and began taking off her clothes. Undressed she looked incredibly wanton and emaciated.
“Come, Dido, my inamorata,” cried Prof Corbitt, divesting himself of his robe as Little Gretchen tumbled off the table into the tub.
Toward dawn Dr. Tettinger passed out in front of the fireplace. Prof Corbitt and Little Gretchen were asleep in one another’s arms in the washtub, exhausted from a night of Olympian calisthenics. Everyone else except Walter and Abiah Kittredge had gone to bed. Now they said good night and slipped off hand in hand.
“I reckon we can go home now, boys,” my father said.
“Bill,” Uncle Henry said, “somehow I have the notion that it just ain’t going to be quite that simple.”
XIII
“The first reason I’m against this,” Uncle Henry said, “is that you’re the one that ought to ride in the Buick. We can put the whiskey in the boot and stretch you out on the back seat and Billy and Rat and me can set up front. That leg ain’t nothing to fool with. You heard what Tett said before he passed out. You freeze it up and you’ll surely lose it. Besides that, they’re bound to be patrolling them tracks with Compton’s train twelve hours overdue. They’ll pick you up before you get to Memphremagog, much less the Common. Your ideas get wilder and wilder, Quebec Bill. We’ll all go together in a nice warm car.”
We were standing beside the handcar in the first light of the morning. It was still at least an hour before sunrise, and bitterly cold. I agreed with Uncle Henry. If we all went in the Buick and kept to the back roads, I doubted that we would be picked up. Also I dreaded the idea of pumping that handcar all the way down to the Common in the cold. The temperature couldn’t have been much above twenty degrees, and the air smelled like snow. I kept thinking about poor Compton, lying roped to the top of that van. He would freeze to death for certain, I thought. He was probably stiff already.
“I’ll think about it,” my father said. He was sitting up on the seat of the handcar and twirling the chambers of the revolver Uncle Henry had gotten away from one of the LaChance brothers just before Croggins slapped the straitjacket on him. Beside him sat the one remaining milk can and the pack basket containing the rest of our rope, the hatchet and twelve bottles of Seagram’s Rat had apparently transferred before taking the other milk can up for the party.
