Mrs. Arthur Gentrie managed her household with that meticulous attention to detail which marks any good executive. Her mind was an encyclopedic storehouse of various household data. Seemingly without any mental effort, she knew when the holes which showed up in Junior’s socks were sufficiently premature to indicate a poor quality in the yarn. When her husband had to travel on business, she knew just which of his shirts had already been sent to the laundry, and could, therefore, be packed in his grip. His other shirts were scrupulously hand-laundered at home.
In her forties, Mrs. Gentrie prided herself on the fact that she “didn’t have a nerve in her body.” She neither ate so much that she bulged with fat, nor had she ever starved herself so as to become neurotic. Her hips weren’t what they had been twenty years ago, but she accepted that with the calm philosophy of a realist. After all, a person couldn’t keep house for a husband, three children, an old-maid sister-in-law, rent out a room, keep household expenses down, and still retain the slim silhouette of a bride. As Mrs. Gentrie herself expressed it, she was “strong as an ox.”
Her husband’s sister wasn’t much help. Rebecca obviously was not a bachelor woman, nor could she be described as an “unmarried relative.” She was very definitely and decidedly an old-fashioned maiden lady, a thin, tea-drinking, cat-loving, gossip-spreading, talkative, critical, yet withal a good-looking old maid.
Mrs. Gentrie didn’t rely on Rebecca for much help around the house. She was too slight physically to be of assistance with the work, and too scatterbrained to help with responsibilities. She had, moreover, frequent spells of “ailing,” during which there seemed to be nothing particularly wrong save a psychic maladjustment seeking a physical manifestation.
Rebecca did, however, keep the room which Mrs. Gentrie rented in order. At present this room was occupied by a Mr. Delman Steele, an architect. Rebecca had two hobbies to which she gave herself with that enthusiasm which characterizes one whose emotions are otherwise repressed. She was an ardent crossword-puzzle fan and an amateur photographer. A darkroom in the basement was equipped with printers, enlargers, and developing tanks, most of which had been built by Arthur Gentrie, who had a distinct flair for tinkering and loved to indulge the whims of his sister.
There were times when Mrs. Gentrie bitterly resented Rebecca, although she tried to fight against that resentment and always managed to keep from showing it. For one thing, Rebecca didn’t get along well with the children. In place of sympathizing with their youthful indiscretions, Rebecca sought to hold them to the standards by which one would judge a grown-up. This, coupled with the fact that she had an uncanny ability to mimic voices and enjoyed nothing better than watching the children squirm while she re-enacted some bit of their conversation over the telephone, introduced a certain element of friction into the household which Mrs. Gentrie found highly annoying.
Nor would Rebecca, who did excellent photographic work, ever take the trouble to get good pictures of the children.
On Junior’s nineteenth birthday, she had condescended to take a picture at Mrs. Gentrie’s urgent request. The ordeal had been as distasteful to Junior as it had been to Rebecca, and Junior’s picture showed it, which would have been bad enough, had it not happened that Rebecca, who was experimenting with some of the new photographic wrinkles, had made an enlargement on a sheet of paper which had been held on an angle. The result had been a picture which was similar to the distorted reflections shown in the curved mirrors of penny arcades.
There was nothing slow about Rebecca’s mental processes when dealing with anything that interested her. Nothing ever went on around the house which she didn’t ferret out. Her curiosity was insatiable, and the manner in which she ferreted out secrets from an inadvertent remark or some casual clue would have done credit to a really good detective. Mrs. Gentrie knew that Rebecca had consented to take care of Delman Steele’s room largely because she enjoyed snooping around through his things, but there was nothing Mrs. Gentrie could do about this, and, inasmuch as the cleaning was always done while Steele was away at the office, there wasn’t much chance he would ever discover Rebecca’s surreptitious activities.
Hester, the maid, who came in by the day, was a strong, stalwart, taciturn, childless woman who lived in the neighborhood. Her husband was an intermittent sufferer from asthma, but was able to get around, and had a job as night watchman in one of the laboratories where new-model planes were given wind-tunnel tests.
Mrs. Gentrie paused to make a mental survey of the house. The breakfast things had been cleared away. Arthur and Junior had gone to the store. The children were off at school. Hester was running small table napkins through the electric mangle, and Rebecca, at her perennial crossword puzzle, was struggling with the daily offering from the newspaper, a pencil in her hand, her dark, deep-set eyes staring in frowning concentration. Mephisto, the black cat to which she was so attached, was curled up in the chair, where a shaft of windowed sunlight furnished a spot of welcome warmth.
The morning fire was still going in the wood stove. The big tea kettle was singing away reassuringly. There was a pile of mending to be done in the basket and... Mrs. Gentrie thought of the preserved fruit in the cellar. It simply had to be gone over. Hester was always inclined to reach for the most accessible tin, and Mrs. Gentrie strongly suspected that over in the dark corner of the cellar there were some cans which went back to 1939.
She paused for a moment, trying to remember the location of a flashlight. The children were always picking them up. There was a candle in the pantry, but... She remembered there was a flashlight in Junior’s bedroom that had a clip which enabled it to be fastened to the belt She’d borrow it for a few moments.
The flashlight in her hand, she descended the cellar stairs. The big gas furnace with its automatic controls had been on earlier in the morning, heating the house. Mrs. Gentrie had cut it off as soon as the family had got out of the way, but the cellar was still slightly warm from the heat which had been given off. She noticed cobwebs on the pipes in the back. Hester would have to get down here for a little cleaning. There was a neat array of canned goods and glass jars on the long shelves which stretched across the full length of the cellar. Mrs. Gentrie gave only a casual glance to the section near the window which marked this year’s canning. She passed up the first part of last year’s canning, and back in the dark corner used Junior’s flashlight to inspect the remnants.
She knew at once Hester had been neglecting this corner. There were cobwebs which showed as much, and the beam of Junior’s flashlight picked up two cans of 1939 pears almost at once. There were some jars of strawberry jam, cans of homemade apple butter — 1939...
Mrs. Gentrie stood perfectly still in puzzled perplexity. The white circle of illumination thrown by the flashlight was centered upon the glistening sides of an unlabeled tin which certainly looked as though it was fresh from the store.
Mrs. Gentrie couldn’t understand how an unlabeled tin could possibly have intruded itself upon her systematic classification of preserves. She used adhesive tape for labels so there would be no trouble with them dropping off. There was, moreover, something about the appearance of the tin itself which made it seem an intruder. The sides were so new and shiny. Not even a cobweb or a smudge on it.
Mrs. Gentrie reached out with her left hand. Unconsciously she measured the muscular effort in terms of a full quart, and, as a result, the light tin seemed to fairly jump off the shelf before she realized that it weighed no more than an empty can.
She looked at it with the frowning displeasure of a systematic individual finding something definitely at variance with an established system.
Holding the tin in her hand, she turned it around, looking at it from all angles. The top was crimped on, sealed carefully in place as though it had been filled with fruit and syrup. But the smooth glistening, somewhat oily surface of the tin indicated that it was just as it had come from the store — except that it had been so carefully sealed.
Mrs. Gentrie frowned at the offending object as she would have regarded evidences that a mouse had been in the shelf which held the spare bedding. She walked back to the cellar stairs, raised her voice, and called, “Hester! Oh, Hester!”
After a few moments she heard the heavy thud of Hester’s steps across the kitchen floor, then the stolid, “Yes, ma’am.”
“How did this tin get here?”
Hester advanced a tentative step or two down the cellar stairs, looked at the can in Mrs. Gentrie’s hand. The vacancy of her expression was sufficient answer to the question.
Mrs. Gentrie said, “It was right over in that corner. And I notice, Hester, you haven’t been cleaning up the 1939 preserves. We had 1940 pears last night, but there are still several cans of ’39 pears.”
“I didn’t know that,” Hester said.
“And this tin,” Mrs. Gentrie observed, “was in with the ’39 preserves.”
Hester shook her head. Long experience as a domestic had taught her that nothing was ever gained by argument. When the lady of the house took a notion to blame you for some slip, you stood there, let her speak her piece, and then went back to work. As it was, Hester was losing just this much time from the mangle, and her mind was half occupied with the unfinished ironing which remained in the kitchen.
There was a big wooden box over by the furnace where Arthur threw odds and ends of scraps, bits of old tin, pieces of wood, and an occasional can. Mrs. Gentrie tossed the offending can into this box.
“It doesn’t seem,” she said as she started upstairs, “that it would have been possible for anyone to have put an empty can on that shelf. I can’t imagine you doing anything like that, Hester.”
Hester walked back up the three or four stairs she had descended, and returned to the mangle without a word.
Rebecca looked up from her crossword puzzle. “What is it?” she asked. “... No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’m timing myself on this puzzle. The newspaper gives the time it should take a person of average intelligence. What in the world, Florence, could be the name of a young salmon with only four letters and the last three a-r-r?”
Mrs. Gentrie shook her head. “Too deep for me,” she said, her manner indicating that she was interested only in dismissing the question. She went over to the basket of mending.
The shaft of sunlight which had been falling on Mephisto had moved over to the edge of the chair. The cat stretched, yawned, moved over a few inches, and squirmed over half on its back.
Rebecca frowningly studied the crossword puzzle.
Mrs. Gentrie said to Hester, “I can’t understand why anyone would seal up an empty can in the first place.”
“No, ma’am.”
Rebecca said, “If I could get the five-letter word meaning the side of a ditch next the parapet, I’d have the first letter of that word for the young salmon.”
“Why not look up parapet?”
“I have. It says, ‘a wall, rampart, or elevation to protect soldiers; a breastwork.’ ”
“Perhaps that dictionary isn’t complete enough to give it”
“Oh, but it is. It’s the Fifth Edition of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. It’s got everything in it you need for these newspaper puzzles.”
Rebecca once more regarded the crossword puzzle, then looked at her watch. The exclamation which left her lips was one of definite annoyance.
She put down the pencil. “It’s no use. I just can’t keep my mind on it, and I’m running behind. What is all this talk about a can?”
“Nothing,” Mrs. Gentrie said, “except that I found a new empty can had been put in with the preserves over in the 1939 corner. I notice that when Junior put the new preserves up on the shelf, he shoved the old ones back over into that dark corner. Next year I’m going to have him do it just the opposite so that we naturally have to use up the old stuff first.”
“But why would anyone put an empty tin in with the full ones?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. That’s what bothers me.”
“Wasn’t there any label on it?”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I threw it in the scrap box down in the cellar.”
Rebecca frowned and said, “I wish you hadn’t told me about it.”
Mrs. Gentrie laughed. “You asked me. Haven’t you any of the letters in your parapet word?”
Rebecca said, “The second two are c-a.”
Mrs. Gentrie held up her fingers. “Five letters?”
“Five letters.”
She checked off letters on her fingers, suddenly said, “I have it, Rebecca. It’s...”
“No, no, don’t help me! I want to get it by myself. I want to see if I can’t beat this ‘average intelligence’ time. Don’t interrupt me, Florence.”
Mrs. Gentrie smiled, picked up the box of mending, carried it over to the breakfast nook, picked out one of Junior’s socks, thrust the darning egg in it, and picked up her needle.
Rebecca said sharply, “Well, I don’t know how you could have found any five-letter word so soon.”
Mrs. Gentrie said soothingly, “Isn’t there a clue in the fact that the second two letters are c-a, Rebecca? Not many letters would go with c-a. You have some of the vowels which would hardly fit. Then in the consonants, I would say that s is about the only one that would go with c. That gives you s-c-a.”
“Oh, I have it,” Rebecca said. “S-c-a-r-p... but whoever heard of a young salmon being called a parr?”
“You might look it up.”
Rebecca turned the pages of the dictionary. “Yes. Here it is. P-a-r-r.”
She worked quickly with her pencil, then looked at the watch again. For a moment there was silence, then she threw down the pencil. “I don’t know what good it does a body to try and concentrate when you keep thinking about empty tins being found on the shelves. Why would an empty tin be put on a shelf, anyway?”
Mrs. Gentrie smiled indulgently. “I’m sure I can’t tell you. Go back to your puzzle, Rebecca. I’m certain you’ll have much better than average intelligence. What else are you having trouble with?”
“A four-letter word meaning ‘an East Indian tree used for masts.’ ”
“Do you have any of the letters?”
“Yes. I’ve got the first two letters. — P-o.”
“What other words would give you a clue?”
“A four-letter word meaning ‘of domestic animals, vehicles, etc., on the left.’ Now what in the world would that mean?”
Mrs. Gentrie puckered her forehead. “Don’t they talk about the ‘near’ side and the ‘off’ side of an animal? Wait a minute. It’s ‘nigh.’ Would that fit in?’
Rebecca moved her pencil tentatively, then faster. Abruptly, she reversed the ends of the pencil to make an erasure and said, “That’s right. It’s nigh. That makes that tree p-o- something -n.”
“Why don’t you take the dictionary and look under p-o? There certainly wouldn’t be so terribly many words.”
Rebecca’s fingers moved with a fluttering rapidity. “Oh, I’ve got it — poon. Now I’ve got the whole thing. Saber-toothed and poon were the two words that were sticking me, and I’ve got a high intelligence rating. I’m way ahead of the average. Isn’t that splendid?”
Mrs. Gentrie said, “That’s really fine. Don’t you think you’d better straighten up Mr. Steele’s room?”
“Oh, it isn’t time for that.”
“It’s ten-thirty.”
“Good heavens, how time flies. Yes, I suppose I should. Sometimes he comes home at noon. Do you know, Florence, I wonder if he’s really an architect. He left some sketches in his room yesterday, and they looked very crude and amateurish to me.”
“I don’t think we should bother about his sketches, Rebecca.”
“Well, good heavens, they were right where a body would notice them. They were right in his upper bureau drawer, right where I couldn’t help seeing them.”
“Did he leave the bureau drawer open?”
“Well, no; but you know how the dust collects on those handles, and when I was dusting, it pulled the drawer open just a little, so I peeked.”
“An architect doesn’t necessarily have to be an artist.”
“Well, perhaps not, but he certainly should be able to draw the floor plans of this house so it would look — well, professional.”
“The floor plans of this house!”
“That’s what I’m telling you. There was a complete sketch of the basement floor plan with the garages, my darkroom, the shelves, window, stairs, and everything.”
Mrs. Gentrie said, “Well, I should think that would prove he was an architect and was interested in this old architecture.”
Rebecca sniffed. “Like as not he’ll turn out to be snooping for some of these agencies, and a building inspector will show up to tell us that our foundations are defective and that we’re going to have to do a lot of expensive repair work.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, run along in and clean up the room, Rebecca.”
Mrs. Gentrie had utilized an outside entrance two years ago to create a room and bath which could be rented. Delman Steele was a very recent tenant. He had moved in within the last ten days. Yet in that short time he had made himself quite one of the family. In the evening he frequently sat with Rebecca, helping her solve crossword puzzles or assisting her in the darkroom.
The huge, rambling, old-fashioned house had its defects. It was hard enough to heat and to keep clean, but there was lots of space, and the rental from the room more than made up for a lot of the inconveniences due to the size of the house.
Moreover, because the house was on a slope, two garages had been cut out of the basement. One of these garages was rented to R. E Hocksley, who lived in one of the flats next door. Mrs. Gentrie had never seen Hocksley himself, but his secretary, who came in by the day, Opal Sunley, was always on hand to pay the garage rent promptly in advance. That started Mrs. Gentrie thinking about Junior. Junior had been evidencing quite an interest in Opal Sunley lately. Junior was only nineteen. In a way, he was old enough to take care of himself; but lately there had been a smug expression about Opal’s eyes that Mrs. Gentrie didn’t like. Opal was four or five years older than Junior, and Mrs. Gentrie felt certain she’d been married and was separated from her husband. It would be a lot better if Junior would spend more time with some of the girls in his own set. Suppose Opal was twenty-three or twenty-four. Those few years made a big difference.
Mrs. Gentrie sighed with the realization that the years, of late, had begun to flit by with smooth, streamlined speed.